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MILTON'S    SONNETS 


ALDEN   SAMPSON 


NEW-YORK 

THE    DE   V1NNE    PRESS 
1886 


MILTON'S  SONNETS 


MILTON'S    SONNETS 


ALDEN   SAMPSON 


.NEW-YORK 

THE    DE   VINNE    PRESS 

1886 


rj 


STACK 
ANW 


MILTON'S  SONNETS. 


A  PAPER  READ  BEFORE  THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  THE  HAVERFORD 
ALUMNI,  IN  ALUMNI  HALL,  HAVERFORD  COLLEGE,  PENNSYLVANIA, 
ON  THE  EVENING  OF  THE  TWENTY-FIRST  OF  JUNE,  1 886,  BY 

ALDEN  SAMPSON,  A.  M.  (Ha-cerford  and  Harvard). 


FOR  twenty  years  of  Milton's  life,  embracing  the 
period,   namely,    of   his   middle   life,   from   the 
year  in  which  he  wrote  Lycidas,  1637,  until  the 
year  in  which  we  know  he  was  continuously  at  work 
upon  Paradise  Lost,  1658,  he  wrote  no  original  Eng- 
lish verse,  except  in  the  form  of  sonnets. 

During  this  time  he  also  wrote  half  a  dozen  Italian 
sonnets.  Both  of  these  groups  I  shall  briefly  consider, 
as  well  as  the  circumstances  under  which  some  of  them 
were  written,  so  far  as  it  is  necessary  for  a  correct 
understanding  of  them,  and  perhaps  may  dwell  some- 
what upon  the  merits  and  limitations  of  the  form  in 
which  he  wrote.  In  what  I  say  of  the  Sonnet  in  gen- 
eral, I  shall  invoke  the  aid  of  the  poets  themselves  who 
have  written  such  verse. 


'5 


1 6  MILTON1  S   SONNETS. 

I  have  heard  it  urged  against  the  Sonnet  that  it  does 
not  answer  Herbert  Spencer's  axiomatic  test  of  excel- 
lence in  form, — the  requirement  of  performance  with 
least  necessary  expenditure  of  power  in  expression. 
To  that  objection  there  is  sufficient  answer. 

On  the  one  hand,  as  Wordsworth  says  in  writing  of 
the  Sonnet, 

The  prison  unto  which  we  doom 
Ourselves,  no  prison  is. 

Nuns  fret  not  at  their  convent's  narrow  room, 
And  hermits  are  contented  with  their  cells, 
And  students  with  their  pensive  citadels  ; 
Maids  at  the  wheel,  the  weaver  at  his  loom, 
Sit  blithe  and  happy ;  bees  that  soar  for  bloom 
High  as  the  highest  peak  of  Furness  Fells 
Will  murmur  by  the  hour  in  foxglove  bells : 
In  truth,  the  prison,  unto  which  we  doom 
Ourselves,  no  prison  is ;  and  hence  to  me, 
In  sundry  moods,  'twas  pastime  to  be  bound 
Within  the  Sonnet's  scanty  plot  of  ground ; 
Pleased  if  some  souls  (for  such  there  needs  must  be) 
Who  have  felt  the  weight  of  too  much  liberty 
Should  find  brief  solace  there,  as  I  have  found. 

When  once  a  poet  has  mastered  the  sonnet  form,  a 
definite  mould  into  which  to  shape  his  thought  is  an 
aid  rather  than  a  hindrance.  Instead  of  having  a  little 
left  over,  when  he  has  reached  his  limit  of  fourteen 
lines,  or  running  a  trifle  short,  as  some  seem  to  imagine 
he  might  do,  he  instinctively  knows  with  perfect  sure- 
ness,  before  a  line  has  definitely  shaped  itself  in  his 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  17 

mind,  whether  or  not  the  subject  is  suited  to  his  pur- 
pose.    A  master  of  the  Sonnet  has  called  it 

The  feeling  from  the  bosom  thrown 
In  perfect  shape. 

(WORDSWORTH,  Dedication  to  Sonnets.") 

On  the  other  hand,  the  sonnet  form  is  an  immense 
advantage  to  the  reader,  who  is  surely  to  be  considered 
in  the  matter,  for  there  cannot  be  poems  without 
readers  any  more  than  an  eagle  could  exist  with- 
out doves  and  white,  innocent  rabbits  to  feed  upon. 
Readers  are  the  natural  and  legitimate  prey  of  poets, 
and,  in  relation  to  the  poets,  answer  the  purpose  of 
their  creation  just  so  far  as  they  appreciatively  read 
what  the  former  have  written ;  the  old-fashioned  idea 
that  it  was  the  other  way  about,  and  that  there  were 
poets  for  the  delectation  of  readers,  is  all  a  mistake. 
Poets  that  are  worthy  of  the  name  write  because  it  is 
their  passion  to  do  so,  and  because  they  cannot  help 
themselves,  and  not  primarily  for  the  sake  of  being 
read, —  they  would  write  whether  they  were  read  or 
not; — but  in  order  for  the  poem  to  be  preserved,  and  for 
the  author  to  feel  the  reflex  inspiration  to  be  derived  from 
appreciation  and  sympathy,  there  must  be  at  least  one 
reader  besides  the  poet  himself;  he  is  a  sort  of  neces- 
sary evil,  often  making  ill  return,  however,  for  what  he 
receives,  being  over-exacting  and  carping.  Therefore, 
although  the  poet  is  bound  not  to  consider  the  reader 
in  the  choice  and  treatment  of  his  subject,  but  is  to 
be  a  law  unto  himself  therein,  yet  it  behooves  him 
to  conciliate  his  reader  in  the  matter  of  form,  and  so 
2 


1 8  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

far  as  he  is  able,  to  smooth  the  way  for  him  in  this 
regard. 

It  is  here  that  we  see  the  positive  advantages  of  the 
Sonnet.  In  the  first  place,  the  absence  of  obscurity, 
which  is  a  rigid  canon  of  this  class  of  verse,  and  the 
length  confined  to  fourteen  lines,  ensure,  so  far  as  any- 
thing the  poet  does  can  ensure,  the  sustained  attention 
of  the  reader  to  the  end.  And,  in  the  second  place, 
the  identity  of  form,  after  it  is  once  mastered  by  the 
reader,  frees  him  from  the  disadvantages  of  irregularity 
and  surprise,  so  that  he  is  enabled  to  give  his  undivided 
attention  to  the  meaning  of  the  sonnet,  and  to  what- 
ever beauty  of  expression  it  may  contain.  If  any  one 
doubt  this,  let  him  take  up  Wordsworth's  Ecclesiastical 
Sonnets,  where  in  each  successive  stanza,  for  the  son- 
nets here  form  a  succession  of  stanzas,  is  rendered  a 
sharply  drawn  picture  from  English  history,  presented 
in  an  atmosphere  of  reflection  almost  demanded  by  the 
nature  of  the  sestet, — with  the  requirements  of  which 
no  one  was  more  familiar  than  Wordsworth, — and 
without  the  forty,  or  hundred  and  forty,  discursive  and 
tediously  didactic  lines,  which  would  inevitably  inter- 
vene, or  come  in  this  proportion  to  the  fourteen  lines 
of  a  sonnet,  if  this  were  the  Excursion. 

One  of  the  most  exquisite  little  beasts  that  I  ever 
saw  was  a  crab,  which  I  dug  out  of  a  sand  bank  during 
a  desultory  stroll  along  the  beach  at  Old  Point  Com- 
fort, Virginia,  A  little  entrance  in  the  side  of  the 
bank  and  a  vanishing  hole  bespoke  an  inhabitant,  and 
tempted  exploration.  With  as  much  care  lest  I  should 
lose  its  course,  in  the  clear,  cool,  characterless  sand,  as 
if  I  were  reading  the  Excursion,  and  feared  to  lose  its 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  19 

thread  of  interest,  I  persevered  inward  and  downward, 
until  at  last,  instinct  with  life,  of  a  pale  gray,  not  unlike 
the  sand  itself,  save  that  the  sun  revealed  on  its  moist 
back  the  iridescent  tints  of  the  opal,  the  occupant  of  the 
mysterious  burrow  stood  revealed.  You  cannot  expect 
me  in  words  of  description  to  convey  the  pleasure 
which  a  creature  so  perfect  and  so  dainty  would 
awaken. 

Now  the  difference  between  Wordsworth's  Sonnets 
and  much  of  his  other  verse,  in  the  fifty  or  sixty  thou- 
sand lines  which  he  wrote,  is  that,  in  the  Prelude  or  in 
the  Excursion  for  instance,  you  have  to  dig  for  your 
crabs,  while  the  first  glance  at  the  Sonnets  reveals 
their  charm,  and  commands  your  admiration. 

I  shall  not  enter  into  any  general  discussion  of  the 
merits  of  this  style  of  composition,  or  spend  much  time 
in  definition.  Everybody  knows  a  sonnet  when  he 
sees  it,  and  perhaps  it  is  sufficient  that  they  who  write 
sonnets  should  understand  the  grammar  of  construction 
to  which  they  must  conform. 

Those  rules  are  fixed  and  arbitrary.  Perhaps  it  will 
be  sufficient  for  our  purpose  to  say  that  two  quatrains 
and  two  tercets  have  been  found  to  be  the  form  which 
most  effectively  presents  the  matter  of  the  Sonnet.  At 
the  most,  six  rhymes  are  allowed,  three  in  the  octave 
and  three  in  the  sestet,  although  the  requirements  of 
the  more  strict  and  elegant  manner  would  limit  the 
number  to  four  or  five,  allowing  only  two  in  the  octave, 
and  three  or  two  rhymes  in  the  sestet,  either  variety 
being  perhaps  equally  good. 

The  rule  of  arrangement  of  rhymes  according  to  the 
Italian  or  'Guittonian'  form  in  the  octave  allows  of  no 


20  MILTON'S  SONNETS. 

deviation;  the  form  of  the  sestet  is  less  arbitrary,  its 
function  allows  of  quicker  and  freer  action,  and  of 
greater  variety  of  rhyme.  Wordsworth,  who  most  care- 
fully studied  the  possibilities  of  the  Sonnet,  allowed 
himself  great  latitude  in  the  sestet ;  I  had  the  curiosity 
to  count  the  variations  of  arrangement  of  rhyme  in  the 
sestet  in  sixty  of  his  sonnets  chosen  from  a  selection 
made  without  regard  to  this  feature,  the  sixty  namely 
in  Matthew  Arnold's  abridgment  of  Wordsworth's 
Poems,  and  found  in  that  number  sixteen  varieties  of 
arrangement  employed. 

In  regard  to  the  substance  of  the  Sonnet  there  can 
be 'no  deviation  from  the  rule  which  requires  that  it 
shall  express  but  a  single  thought  or  feeling — 

A  Sonnet  is  a  moment's  monument, 

Memorial  from  the  Soul's  eternity 

To  one  dead,  deathless  hour.     Look  that  it  be, 

Whether  for  lustral  rite  or  dire  portent, 

Of  its  own  intricate  fullness  reverent; 

Carve  it  in  ivory  or  in  ebony, 

As  Day  or  Night  prevail;  and  let  Time  see 

Its  flowering  crest  impearled  and  orient. 

A  Sonnet  is  a  coin:  its  face  reveals 

The  Soul, — its  converse,  to  what  Power  'tis  due:  — 

Whether,  for  tribute  to  the  august  appeals 

Of  Life,  or  dower  in  Love's  high  retinue, 

It  serve;  or  'mid  the  dark  wharf's  cavernous  breath, 

In  Charon's  palm  it  pay  the  toll  to  death. 

(ROSSETTI.) 

The  typical  sonnet  states  and  develops  its  subject  in 
the  first  and  second  quatrains;  this  being  the  end  of 


MILTON'S  SONNETS.  21 

the  octave,  there  should  occur  a  slight  pause  before 
entering  upon  the  sestet,  which  should  approach  the 
thought  upon  another  and  higher  level,  and  in  the  typ- 
ically perfect  sonnet  does  so.  Shakspere,  although 
quite  ignoring  the  correct  form,  as  a  rule  instinctively 
observes  the  pause  after  the  octave,  and  advances  the 
thought  to  a  higher  stage  in  the  sestet.  The  progress 
of  the  octave  and  sestet  has  been  likened  to  the  mo- 
tion in  rise  and  descent  of  a  ball;  the  momentary  pause 
at  the  turn  of  the  ball,  where  it  seems  to  stop  to  think 
about  going  home  again,  is  that  at  the  end  of  the 
octave.  The  simile  just  fails  of  being  a  perfect  one, 
but  if  I  may  be  permitted  to  indulge  in  epigram,  a 
sonnet  written  on  this  plan  falls  into  the  vice  of  epi- 
gram itself, — the  action  comes  to  the  end  with  a  crash, 
instead  of  quietly  lapsing,  as  it  ought  to  do,  its  purpose 
fulfilled. 

Nothing  better  will  be  written  about  this  phase  of 
the  Sonnet  than  the  following,  the  sestet  of  one  by 
Theodore  Watts: 

A  sonnet  is  a  wave  of  melody: 

From  heaving  waters  of  the  impassioned  soul 

A  billow  of  tidal  music  one  and  whole 

Flows  in  the  'octave';  then  returning  free, 

Its  ebbing  surges  in  the  'sestet'  roll 

Back  to  the  depths  of  Life's  tumultuous  sea. 

To  compare  small  things  with  great,  and  if  I  may  be 
permitted  to  say  so  without  irreverence,  which  I  think 
can  hardly  be  detected,  the  sestet  should  bear  the  same 
relation  to  the  octave  that  the  New  Testament  does  to 


22  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

the  Old  ;  it  should  be  the  fulfilment  and  consummation 
of  the  former's  hopes  and  promise.  The  purpose  of  the 
former  is  to  prepare  our  minds  for  the  reflection,  inspi- 
ration, lesson,  or  revelation  held  in  the  latter. 

With  such  possibilities,  it  is  not  surprising  that,  in  a 
field  which  has  been  so  assiduously  worked  as  this  has 
been,  many  of  the  choicest  gems  of  English  poesy 
should  be  found. 

Scorn  not  the  Sonnet ;  Critic,  you  have  frowned 
Mindless  of  its  just  honours :  with  this  key 
Shakspere  unlocked  his  heart ;   the  melody 
Of  this  small  lute  gave  ease  to  Petrarch's  wound ; 
A  thousand  times  this  pipe  did  Tasso  sound  ; 
With  it  Camoens  soothed  an  exile's  grief; 
The  Sonnet  glittered  a  gay  myrtle  leaf 
Amid  the  cypress  with  which  Dante  crowned 
His  visionary  brow ;  a  glow-worm  lamp 
It  cheered  mild  Spenser,  called  from  Faery-land 
To  struggle  through  dark  ways  ;  and  when  a  damp 
Fell  round  the  path  of  Milton,  in  his  hand 
The  Thing  became  a  trumpet,  whence  he  blew 
Soul-animating  strains  —  alas!  too  few. 

(WORDSWORTH.  ) 

The  necessity  for  terse  utterance,  combined  with  the 
other  requirements  which  I  have  mentioned,  makes  it 
perfectly  adapted  for  the  expression  of  love,  in  whose 
service  it  was  devised,  and  will  always  be  employed ; 
for  eulogy ;  for  philosophic  reflection,  if  the  philosophy 
be  clothed  in  the  garb  of  imaginative  language ;  for 
the  expression  of  delight  of  any  sort;  for  any  strong 
emotion,  —  provided  always  that  a  sonnet  contain  not 
more  than  a  single  thought  or  emotion,  —  that  it  do 


MILTON'S  SONNETS.  23 

not  offend  the  unities.  It  may  hold  within  itself  intri- 
cacies to  baffle  a  single  perusal.  Shakspere's  sonnets 
contain  subtleties  to  baffle  repeated  and  careful  study, 
and  yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  he  employed 
this  medium  of  expression  with  a  perfectly  clear  appre- 
ciation of  its  mysterious  capabilities. 

The  art  of  sonnet-making  is  a  mystery — just  as 
much  a  mystery  as  coat-making  was  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  Those  who  know  in  what  lies  the  secret  of  suc- 
cess, of  course  have  been  more  discreet  than  to  reveal 
it,  or  have  couched  their  revelation  in  properly  myste- 
rious words.  In  answer  to  the  riddle  which  he  himself 
propounds,  '  What  is  a  sonnet  ? '  a  writer  still  living* 
expresses  himself  in  metaphors,  using  the  form  of  whose 
essence  he  interrogates. 

'Tis  the  pearly  shell 
That  murmurs  of  the  far-off  murmuring  sea. 

***** 

This  was  the  flame  that  shook  with  Dante's  breath ; 

The  solemn  organ  whereon  Milton  played, 

And  the  clear  glass  where  Shakspere's  shadow  falls ; 

A  sea  this  is  —  beware  who  ventureth  ! 

For  like  a  fjord  the  narrow  floor  is  laid 

Deep  as  mid  ocean  to  the  sheer  mountain  walls. 

I  think  it  is  Gosse  who  speaks  of  this  as  an  'age  of 
flourishing  sonneteers.'  It  would  do  for  him  to  speak 
in  mild  disparagement,  for  he  has  written  some  very 
good  sonnets  himself.  But  it  is  well  for  us  not  to  over- 
look the  fact  that  in  no  one  department  of  verse  does 
this  century  excel  more  fully  than  in  the  Sonnet,  and 
only  one  other  period,  the  Elizabethan,  at  all  compares 

•  Richard  Watson  Gilder. 


24  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

with  it  in  productiveness.  In  form  the  Sonnet  was  then 
crude,  and  in  substance  was  limited  to  a  narrow  realm. 
To-day  it  is  the  fashion,  and  has  countless  admirers. 
Every  poet  of  the  century  has  added  to  the  number 
of  those  already  written,  and  new  ones  challenge  our 
admiration  constantly;  in  fact  a  number  of  the  Academy 
now  without  a  fairly  good  one  is  the  exception. 

Mr.  Waddington  quotes  a  writer  in  the  Westminster 
jRevieiv,  whom  he  endorses,  calling  attention  to  the 
resemblance,  'making  allowance  for  altered  circum- 
stances,' between  the  English  Sonnet  and  the  Greek 
Epigram,  and  saying  that  the  Sonnet  is  taking  the 
place  with  us  which  the  Epigram  held  in  the  literature 
of  the  Greeks.  In  both  'style  is  put  under  high  pres- 
sure,' (Lytton);  'Of  both  it  may  be  said,  in  the  words  of 
an  old  author,  that  although  a  little  thing  gives  pleasure, 
perfection  is  not  a  little  thing.'  (Saml.  Waddington.) 

The  Sonnet  is  almost  a  touchstone  for  profound  emo- 
tion. The  spurious  in  this  garb  is  revealed  at  once. 
If  the  clown  would  escape  detection  let  him  not  don 
the  habit  of  the  prince.  Intense  feeling  here  can  allow 
itself  a  voice,  guarded  by  dignity  of  expression  from  the 
betrayal  of  weakness,  or  from  falling  into  lack  of  self- 
control.  Even  the  most  intense  feeling  can  hardly  be- 
come hysterical  in  fourteen  lines. 

Allow  me  to  recall  to  your  mind,  as  examples  of  un- 
questioned realness  and  intensity  of  feeling,  many  of 
Rossetti's  sonnets  in  the  House  of  Life,  Keats's  Last 
Sonnet,  or  that  beginning 

The  day  is  gone,  and  all  its  sweets  are  gone : 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  25 

Lowell's  Sonnet  on  the  death  of  his  wife,  or  Words- 
worth's in  memory  of  his  daughter — 

Surprised  by  joy — impatient  as  the  Wind 
I  turned  to  share  the  transport — oh!  with  whom 
But  Thee,  deep-buried  in  the  silent  tomb, 
That  spot  which  no  vicissitude  can  find  ? 

or  that  one  beginning 

It  is  a  beauteous  Evening,  calm  and  free; 
The  holy  time  is  quiet  as  a  Nun 
Breathless  with  adoration : 

that  beginning 

Another  year! — another  deadly  blow! 
Another  mighty  Empire  overthrown  ! 

or  that  other, 

Milton  !  thou  shouldst  be  living  at  this  hour : 
England  hath  need  of  thee. 


The  present  age  regards  the  capabilities  of  this  form 
of  verse  in  an  altogether  different  light  from  that  in 
which  its  predecessors  regarded  them.  The  faults 
which  Addison  points  out  for  avoidance  in  the  Epic  or 
Heroic  Poem  would  be  regarded  to-day,  strange  as  it 
would  formerly  have  seemed,  as  equally  applicable  to 
the  Sonnet.  There  are,  Addison  tells  us,  '  Two  kinds 
of  thoughts  which  are  carefully  to  be  avoided.  The 


26  MIL  TON'S  SONNETS. 

first  are  such  as  are  affected  and  unnatural ;  the  second 
such  as  are  mean  and  vulgar.'  Until  Milton's  time, 
affectation  and  artificiality  were  the  very  life's  breath 
of  the  Sonnet ;  a  life  in  death  we  deem  it  now.  The 
sonnets  of  Spenser  and  of  Shakspere  were  artificial. 

Every  one  must  have  noticed  in  examples  of  Egyp- 
tian sculpture,  the  smile  which  the  faces  invariably  bear, 
and  which  I  suppose  was  regarded  by  cultivated  Egyp- 
tians of  those  days  as  absolutely  required  by  good 
breeding.  To  preserve  a  composure  of  feature  best 
described  as  Grecian,  would  no  doubt,  to  a  man  of  the 
world,  of  the  Egyptian  court  at  its  prime,  have  seemed 
rude  and  barbaric  in  the  extreme.  In  like  manner, 
before  Milton's  day,  to  have  written  a  sonnet  in  a  per- 
fectly straightforward,  simple  way,  would  have  pro- 
claimed the  writer's  ignorance  of  polite  usage. 

I  remember  an  honoured  professor  of  Law,  who  would 
condemn  the  lack  of  artificial  construction  in  a  Bill  or 
Answer  in  Equity,  and  I  recall  the  tone  of  approbation 
with  which  he  would  commend  the  excellence  of  some 
special  pleading  as  being  'artificially  drawn.'  It  was 
a  quality  of  the  English  Sonnet  before  Milton,  that  it 
was  'artificially  drawn';  he  overcame  that  tradition, 
and  it  is  the  merit  of  his  sonnets  that  they  are  the  nat- 
ural, forcible  utterance,  recorded  at  the  time,  of  emo- 
tions actually  felt,  and  not  merely  imagined  by  the  poet 
for  the  sake  of  expression  in  language  which  he  has 
at  his  command  ;  the  exercise  of  an  instinctive  faculty 
whose  cultivation  and  indulgence  are  merely  a  source 
of  refined  pleasure. 

Milton's  Sonnets,  twenty-four  in  number,  three  hun- 
dred and  forty-two  lines,  are  almost  half  as  long  as  a 


MILTON'S  SONNETS.  27 

majority  of  the  books  of  Paradise  Lost,  nearly  twice 
as  long  as  Lycidas,  almost  exactly  twice  the  length  of 
//  Penseroso,  and  more  than  double  that  of  L  Allegro. 

Of  course  the  value  of  a  poem  does  not  depend  upon 
its  length,  nor  can  its  importance  be  thereby  gauged, 
but  it  is  interesting  at  least  to  see  what  part  of  a  poet's 
work  any  particular  group  of  poems  may  form ;  and 
when  we  learn  that  the  Sonnets  are  equal  in  length 
to  Lycidas  and  L  Allegro  together,  we  cannot  at  all 
events  dismiss  them  as  an  insignificant  portion  of  Mil- 
ton's work.  The  additional  fact  that  their  composition 
was  spread  over  nearly  thirty  years  of  the  poet's  life, 
adds  a  peculiar  sort  of  personal  charm  to  them,  and  one 
that  is  not  associated  with  any  other  of  his  works. 
Here  we  have  verses  written  when  he  was  a  Cambridge 
Bachelor  of  Arts,  working  for  his  Master's  degree; 
love  sonnets  in  Italian,  written  when  he  was  in  the 
full  tide  of  scholarly  popularity  abroad, — young,  hand- 
some, learned,  already  recognized  in  Italy  as  a  poet  of 
distinction,  —  and  full  of  ambition  for  the  future;  son- 
nets addressed  to  Cromwell,  Fairfax,  Vane ;  sonnets 
inspired  by  the  stirring  events  of  the  times  in  which  he 
lived,  as  that  upon  the  intended  assault  of  the  royal 
army  on  London,  and  upon  the  occasion  of  the  mas- 
sacre of  the  Vaudois  in  the  Alps ;  sonnets  inspired  by 
friendship;  a  touching  sonnet  on  the  occasion  of  his 
blindness ;  and,  finally,  one  on  the  death  of  his  dearly 
beloved  wife  when  he  was  fifty  years  of  age.  The  Son- 
nets at  that  time  of  his  life  formed  more  than  an  eighth 
part  of  his  entire  poetical  work,  except  what  he  wrote 
in  Latin  and  in  Greek,  and  throwing  out  of  account  his 
metrical  version  of  the  Psalms,  which  possesses  this  qual- 


28  MIL  TON'S   SONNETS. 

ity  in  common  with  the  vast  majority  of  church  hymns 
and  psalmody,  that  it  is  to  be  valued  for  something  quite 
different  from  poetry ;  in  fact  is  not  poetry  at  all. 

As  we  have  often  heard,  had  Milton  died  at  the  age 
of  Spenser,  Burns,  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats,  or  Clough, 
we  should  have  had  no  Paradise  Lost  at  all,  nay  even 
had  he  died  at  the  age  of  Shakspere,  we  should  have 
had  only  a  few  fragments  of  that  poem.  Had  he  died 
before  it  was  written,  upon  the  Ode  on  the  Nativity, 
upon  Comus,  L  Allegro,  II  Penseroso,  Lycidas,  and 
some  half  a  dozen  of  the  Sonnets,  his  renown  as  a 
writer  of  English  verse  of  the  first  order  would  be 
established ;  having,  however,  written  Paradise  Lost, 
everything  of  his  past  production  at  once  starts  forward 
into  new  prominence,  for  a  reason  apart  from  its  own 
excellence,  as  being  the  work  of  England's  one  epic 
poet,  and  as  an  assistance  to  understand  the  man  — 
for  that  if  for  no  other  reason  of  great  value.  It  is  nec- 
essary for  us  to  recall  these  facts  to  estimate  properly 
the  subject  in  hand,  —  how  far  the  Sonnets  of  Milton 
reflect  his  character  and  the  times  in  which  they  were 
written,  and  how  important  they  are  as  poetry. 

The  reason  'why  Milton  could  not  write  a  sonnet,' 
said  Dr.  Johnson,  sitting  in  solemn  confab  with  a  kin- 
dred genius,  Hannah  More,  was,  that  being  possessed 
of  a  '  genius  that  could  hew  a  colossus  out  of  a  rock, 
he  could  not  carve  heads  on  cherry-stones,'  —  manag- 
ing, in  these  few  words,  in  the  first  place,  to  express 
.his  contempt  for  the  Sonnet,  unmindful  of  its  due  hon- 
ours, and  forgetting  what  Petrarch,  Dante,  and  Shaks- 
pere had  written  in  this  form,  and  in  the  second  place, 
to  demonstrate  his  own  dullness  as  a  critic,  for  as  a 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  29 

matter  of  fact,  among  Milton's  Sonnets  are  to  be  found 
those  same  colossal  qualities,  the  existence  of  which  in 
Paradise  Lost  he  could  not  altogether  ignore. 

I  once  saw  a  countryman  try  to  stop  a  runaway  horse. 
Failing  in  his  purpose,  and  resolved  to  be  a  force  if  not 
an  assistant  power,  he  hit  the  horse  a  smart  blow  with 
his  shovel  as  it  escaped  from  him.  Johnson's  criticism 
was  as  useful.  He  was  making  it  more  difficult  instead 
of  easier  for  the  less  erudite  public  to  master  the  very 
points  of  excellence  which  it  was  his  business  to  find 
and  capture  for  their  service. 

I  have  said  that  Dr.  Johnson  could  not  altogether 
ignore  the  excellence  of  Paradise  Lost,  yet  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  was  unable  to  express  admiration  for  that 
poem  without  very  serious  qualifications.  It  is  'one  of 
the  books,'  he  says,  'which  the  reader  admires  and  lays 
down,  and  forgets  to  take  up  again.  None  ever  wished 
it  longer  than  it  is.  Its  perusal  is  a  duty  rather  than  a 
pleasure.'  A  criticism  worthy  of  the  literary  editor  of 
the  Cheyenne  Boomerang,  and  as  dangerous  to  its  pro- 
jector as  the  boomerang. 

But  it  is  in  his  estimate  of  Lycidas  that  Johnson 
most  fully  succeeds  in  showing  the  worthlessness  of 
his  strictures  generally  upon  Milton;  of  Lycidas,  since 
selected,  Hallam,  for  instance,  says  in  his  Literature  of 
Europe,  by  the  suffrage  of  scholars  and  lovers  of  litera- 
ture, as  the  poem  par  excellence  in  our  language  which 
may  serve  as  a  test  in  a  reader  of  genuine  feeling  for 
what  is  really  good  in  poetry, — the  one  poem  best  suited 
to  prove  an  appreciation  of  those  higher  qualities  of 
poetry  that  must  be  felt  to  be  realized,  and  which  lie 
beyond  the  province  of  demonstration  altogether. 


30  MILTON'S  SONNETS. 

'In  this  poem/  says  Johnson,  'there  is  no  nature,  for 
there  is  no  truth  ;  there  is  no  art,  for  there  is  nothing 
new.  Its  form  is  that  of  a  pastoral ;  easy,  vulgar,  and 
therefore  disgusting ;  whatever  images  it  can  supply 
are  long  ago  exhausted ;  and  its  inherent  improbability 
always  forces  dissatisfaction  on  the  mind.'  Elsewhere 
he  said :  '  Surely  no  man  could  have  fancied  that  he 
read  Lycidas  with  pleasure,  had  he  not  known  the 
author ! ' 

Bearing  in  our  recollection  his  estimate  of  Paradise 
Zttf/and  of  Lycidas,  we  shall  not  be  surprised  at  what  he 
says  of  the  Sonnets.  'They  deserve  not  any  particular 
criticism';  he  informs  us,  'forof  the  best  it  can  only  be  said 
that  they  are  not  bad ;  and  perhaps  only  the  eighth  and 
twenty-first  are  truly  entitled  to  this  slender  commen- 
dation.' He  says  elsewhere,  'Milton  never  learned  the 
art  of  doing  little  things  with  grace ;  he  overlooked 
the  milder  excellence  of  suavity  and  softness;  he  was 
a  Lion  that  had  no  skill  in  dandling  the  Kid? — again 
striking  wildly  with  the  shovel  of  his  wit.  Johnson's 
ponderous  attempt  to  gambol,  here,  puts  one  in  mind 
of  the  continuation  of  the  passage  from  which  he  adapts, 
and  its  equally  agile  antics ;  where  for  the  amusement  of 
our  first  parents  in  their  honeymoon 

Th'  unwieldy  Elephant 
To  make  them  mirth  used  all  his  might,  and  wreathed 

His  lithe  proboscis. 

(P.  L.,  IV.,  345-7.) 

We  cannot  forgive  Johnson  for  his  belittling  criticism 
of  Milton,  for  it  was  evoked  by  ignoble  motives.  John- 
son was  a  devout  Royalist  and  churchman,  Milton  a 


MILTON'S  SONNETS.  31 

Republican  and  too  extreme  a  Dissenter  to  find  favour 
long  even  among  the  Presbyterians ;  Johnson  hated  him 
on  these  grounds,  and  abused  his  autocratic  power  in 
literature  to  throw  him  into  disfavour. 

Addison,  by  careful  and  discriminating  praise,  had 
recalled  people's  flagging  attention  to  the  beauty  and 
supreme  excellence  of  Paradise  Lost ;  Johnson  undid 
that  work  by  unfair  and  unjust  use  of  his  power,  (for  he 
and  literature  at  that  time  were  nearly  synonymous,) 
and  brought  him  into  disfavour  again  for  half  a  century. 
But  there  is  no  question  now  about  the  place  he  holds, 
or  about  the  merit  of  his  Sonnets, — 

Soul-animating  strains,  alas  !  too  few, 

Wordsworth  calls  them ;  the  late  Archbishop  Trench 
describes  them  as  the  '  noblest  in  the  English  lan- 
guage ' ;  Palgrave  says,  '  Milton's  ( Sonnets )  stand 
supreme  in  stateliness.'  I  could  cite  numerous  other 
appreciative  comments,  "but  it  may  be  as  well  for  us 
to  examine  them  for  ourselves. 

Although  Milton  wrote  but  twenty-four  sonnets,  in 
the  time  before  us^I  think  that  it  will  be  wise  to  con- 
sider selections  merely  from  that  number. 

The  verses  prefixed  to  the  Shakspere  folio  of  1630, 
only  fourteen  years  after  his  death,  beginning — 

What  needs  my  Shakspere  for  his  honoured  bones, 
The  labour  of  an  age  in  piled  stones  ? 

sometimes  classed  among  Milton's  Sonnets,  although 
sixteen  lines  long  and  written  in  couplets,  being  there- 


32  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

fore  not  in  the  sonnet  form  at  all,  are  yet  in  matter 
composed  somewhat  upon  the  mould  of  Shakspere's 
own,  published  twenty  years  before.  Particularly  the 
conceit  embodied  in  the  last  two  couplets  suggests  his 
manner, — according  to  our  idea  of  to-day,  a  bad  one. 

Then  thou,  our  fancy  of  itself  bereaving, 
Dost  make  us  marble  with  too  much  conceiving, 
And  so  sepulchred  in  such  pomp  dost  lie,  t 
That  kings  for  such  a  tomb  would  wish  to  die. 

To  illustrate  the  similarity  of  manner,  compare  the 
following  final  couplet  from  one  of  Shakspere's  Son- 
nets: 

And  thou  in  this  (my  verse)  shalt  find  thy  monument, 
When  tyrants'  crests  and  tombs  of  brass  are  spent. 

(CVIL,  13-14-) 

It  is  interesting  to  mark  that  Milton  ever  wrote  in 
this  way,  since  nothing  is  more  characteristic  of  his 
later  style  than  careful  avoidance  of  artificial  poetical 
abstractions  and  forced  conceits,  which  so  abound  in 
Shakspere's  Sonnets,  and  that  would  be  bearable  only 
when,  as  in  his  use  of  them,  they  are  packed  full  of 
meaning.  Let  any  modern  versifier  shun  their  imita- 
tion, unless  he  would  stand  convicted  by  contrast  with 
their  force,  of  inevitable  weakness  and  absurdity,  all  the 
more  apparent  from  comparison  with  Shakspere  forced 
upon  the  reader's  notice  by  this  very  similarity. 

In  the  sonnet  to  the  Nightingale,  usually  called  the 
First  Sonnet,  and  written  when  Milton  was  twenty-two 
years  of  age,  beginning, 


MILTON 'S   SONNETS.  33 

O  Nightingale !  that  on  yon  bloomy  spray, 
Warblest  at  eve  when  all  the  woods  are  still ; 
Thou  with  fresh  hope  the  lover's  heart  doth  fill, 
While  the  jolly  hours  lead  on  propitious  May — 

Milton  followed  the  accepted  model  of  the  time,  and 
wrote  in  the  vein  of  Spenser's  Amoretti,  and  of  the 
Italian  sonnets,  with  which  he  was  familiar. 

To  hear  the  nightingale  before  the  cuckoo,  was  held 
to  'portend  success  in  love,'  the  poet  says. 

Now  timely  sing,  ere  the  rude  bird  of  hate 
Foretell  my  hopeless  doom  in  some  grove  nigh; 
As  thou  from  year  to  year  hast  sung  too  late 
For  my  relief,  yet  hadst  no  reason  why. 


Milton's  invocation,  it  proved,  was  fruitless,  as  he 
remained  unmarried  for  thirteen  years ;  it  had  been 
well  for  him  then  had  the  liquid  notes  not  reached  his 
ears,  which 

First  heard  before  the  shallow  cuckoo's  bill, 
Portend  success  in  love. 


In  this  sonnet  to  love's  messenger  we  find  none  of 
the  fire  of  Lycidas,  written  seven  years  later,  where  the 
concrete 

Tangles  of  Neaera's  hair 

throw  into  shadowy  poetical  indistinctness  and  insig- 
3 


34 


MILTON'S  SONNETS. 


nificance  the  pale  abstraction  embodied  in  the  last  and 
best  two  lines  of  the  sonnet  — 

Whether  the  Muse  or  Love  call  thee  his  mate, 
Both  them  I  serve  and  of  their  train  am  I. 

Milton,  blind,  wifeless,  and  'in  disgrace  with  fortune 
and  in  men's  eyes,'  threw  a  thousand  times  the  youth- 
ful fire  into  his  praise  of  Eve  when  he  came  to  write 
Paradise  Lost  more  than  thirty  years  later.  We  find 
what  is  lacking  in  this  sonnet,  somewhat  of  the  volume 
and  surge  of  power  which  we  have  come  to  regard  as 
almost  synonymous  with  the  name  of  Milton,  in  the 
Ode  on  Christ's  Nativity,  written  the  year  before,  and 
while  Milton  was  still  a  student  at  Cambridge,  although 
in  this  as  in  the  verses  to  Shakspere  and  in  the  First 
Sonnet,  he  had  not  escaped  altogether  from  the  ham- 
pering influences  of  academic  tradition. 

Together  in  the  Academy  of  Fine  Arts  at  Venice, 
hang  Titian's  Visitation  of  St.  Elizabeth,  which  he 
began  when  he  was  fourteen  years  of  age,  and  his 
Entombment  of  Christ,  upon  which  he  was  at  work  in 
his  ninety-ninth  year:  fitting  monuments,  marking  the 
beginning  and  end  of  that  long  and  crowded  life,  a  life 
devoted  to  the  service  of  Religion  and  of  Art. 

In  like  manner,  it  was  fitting  that  Milton's  first  poet- 
ical  production  above  the  rank  of  college  exercise, 
should  be  a  Hymn  on  the  Morning  of  the  Nativity  of 
Christ. — 

It  was  the  Winter  wilde, 

While  the  Heav'n-born  Childe, 

All  meanly  wrapped  in  the  rude  manger  lies 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  35 

—  the  prelude  of  that  career  to  be  closed  in  solemn 
grandeur  by  the  simple  elevation  and  dignity  of  the 
Paradise  Regained,  wherein  is  portrayed  the  victory  of 
Christ  over  Satan  and  the  declaring  of  his  deity,  —  the 
story  of  man  proved  God,  and 

Recovered  Paradise  to  all  mankind, 
By  one  man's  firm  obedience  fully  tried 
Through  all  temptation. 

It  is  necessary  that  I  should  quote  from  Milton,  yet 
I  cannot  hope  in  doing  so  to  read  you  that  which  shall 
possess  the  charm  of  freshness  and  surprise ;  but  after 
all  has  been  said,  they  are  not  the  highest  virtues  which 
verse  may  possess ;  to  him  who  knows  his  Shakspere 
is  a  page  of  Macbeth  less  pleasant  from  acquaintance  ! 
Therefore,  with  no  apology,  I  shall  quote  lines  which 
are  familiar  to  all,  sure  of  the  approval  of  him  who 
knows  them  best. 

For  'intricate  fullness, 'for  profundity,  for  subtlety,  for 
what  may  be  called  the  metaphysics  of  poetry,  there  is 
no  comparison  between  the  difficulties  of  Shakspere's 
Sonnets  and  those  of  Milton ;  yet  in  one  way  it  is  a 
simpler  task  to  treat  of  Shakspere's  one  hundred  and 
fifty-four  sonnets  than  of  Milton's  twenty-four ;  the 
former  are  sequent  stanzas  of  a  poem,  or  of  perhaps 
three  poems  written  in  a  similar  vein,  while  each  of 
Milton's  is  an  independent  poem  in  itself,  and  it  is  nec- 
essary to  a  great  extent  to  treat  them  as  separate  poems. 
In  only  two  instances  are  they  continuous,  and  the 
second  in  both  of  these  cases  is  written  in  quite  a  dif- 
ferent vein  from  that  in  which  the  first  is  written. 


36  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

The  second  of  Milton's  Sonnets  was  written  on  the 
occasion  of  his  twenty-third  birthday,  9  Dec.,  1631. 

How  soon  hath  time,  the  subtle  thief  of  youth, 
Stolen  on  his  wing  my  three  and  twentieth  year. 


This  '  Petrarchian  stanza,'  as  he  characterizes  it,  was 
sent  to  a  friend  who  had  tried  to  persuade  Milton  to 
enter  the  church  as  a  profession,  and  to  do  something, 
instead  of  spending  so  much  time  in  preparation  for  he 
knew  not  what. 

There  can  be  no  question  but  that  Milton  had  the 
highest  estimation  of  the  calling  of  the  poet;  his  office 
was  that  of  the  inspired  seer  rather  than  merely  that  of 
the  singer.  The  prayer  of  his  youth  was  that  of  his 
old  age : 

( Do )  thou  celestial  light 

Shine  inward,  and  the  mind  through  all  her  powers 
Irradiate,  there  plant  eyes,  all  mist  from  thence 
Purge  and  disperse,  that  I  may  see  and  tell 
Of  things  invisible  to  mortal  sight. 

(P.  L.,  in.,  51-5.) 

And  he  felt  equally  confident  of  his  own  election  to 
this  high  calling.  Deliberately  and  before  his  twenty- 
third  birthday,  he  had  formed  the  determination  to 
write  a  great  Epic  Poem,  such  as  Homer,  Dante,  and 
Tasso  had  written,  a  purpose  which  he  never  relin- 
quished; and  he  had  in  mind  so  early  as  1640  the  idea 
of  Paradise  Lost. 

It  seems  an  exaggeration  of  modesty  to  say,  as  he 
does  in  this  Sonnet  on  his  Twenty-third  Birthday,  that 
his 


MfLTON'S  SONNETS.  37 

Late  spring  no  bud  or  blossom  shew'th, 

for  one  who  had,  two  years  gone  by,  written  the  Ode  on 
Christ's  Nativity,  wherein,  if  verse  ever  contained  the 
echo  of  such,  are  heard  celestial  harmonies.  On  his 
ears  fell  the  majesty  and  the  sweetness  of  the  mystic 
chants,  whose  ministrations  before  God's  throne  never 
cease,  the  worship  of  his  Angels,  sons  of  light  whose 

Songs 

And  choral  symphonies,  day  without  night, 
Circle  his  throne  rejoicing. 

(P.  L.,V.,  161-3.) 

Reading  this  poem  in  properly  attuned  serenity  of  mind, 
the  reader  shares  the  transport  of  its  creation.  We  feel 
that  the  music  which  the  young  poet  invokes  in  fer- 
vent devotion  to  greet  his  God,  has  touched  his  own 
sense.  His  Muse  has  been  permitted  to  join  her  voice 
unto  the  Angel  Choir. 

Ring  out,  ye  crystal  spheres, 
Once  bless  our  human  ears, 

If  ye  have  power  to  touch  our  senses  so ; 
And  let  your  silver  chime 
Move  in  melodious  time  ; 

And  let  the  bass  of  heaven's  deep  organ  blow ; 
And  with  your  ninefold  harmony, 
Make  up  full  consort  to  the  angelic  symphony. 


In  the  Sonnet  we  are  considering,  modesty  is  shown 
again,  here  rather  a  characteristic  of  the  nation  than  of 


38  MIL  TON'S   SONNETS. 

the  individual,  when  he  speaks  of  his  approach  to  man- 
hood on  his  twenty-third  birthday;  — 

Perhaps  my  semblance  might  deceive  the  truth 
That  I  to  manhood  am  arrived  so  near. 


We  on  this  side  of  the  water  at  all  events,  should 
regard  with  suspicion  the  ingenuousness  of  a  bachelor 
of  arts  who  on  his  twenty-third  birthday  should  express 
any  doubts  whatsoever  that  he  were  not  a  full-fledged 
man. 

Milton  was  distinguished  for,  and  prided  himself 
upon,  his  manly  beauty  all  his  life.  A  Latin  epigram 
written  on  him  by  the  scholar  Manso  in  Naples  when 
he  was  thirty  years  old  said  of  him, 

Mind,  form,  face,  grace,  and  morals  are  perfect. 

(MASSON'S  TRANSLATION.) 

And  years  before,  from  the  freshness  of  his  complexion, 
and  generally  youthful  appearance,  combined  with  the 
propriety  of  his  life,  he  was  known  at  Cambridge  as 
the  '  lady  of  Christ's.' 

There  is  certainly  every  appearance  of  real  modesty 
when  he  says, 

And  inward  ripeness  doth  much  less  appear 
That  some  more  timely  happy  spirits  indu'th. 


There  can  be  no  question  but  that  the  expression  of 
the  last  six  lines  is  in  serious  earnest.     They  have  the 


MILTON'S   SONNETS. 


39 


solemnity  of  a  prayer,  and  express  the  feeling  which 
guided  his  whole  life. 

Yet  be  it  less  or  more,  or  soon  or  slow, 

It  shall  be  still  in  strictest  measure  even 

To  that  same  lot  however  mean  or  high, 

Toward  which  time  leads  me  and  the  will  of  Heaven. 

All  is,  if  I  have  grace  to  use  it  so, 

As  ever  in  my  great  task-master's  eye. 

(SONNET  II.) 

The  Ode  on  the  Nativity  of  Christ,  the  verses  On 
Shakspere,  the  First  and  Second  Sonnets  were  written 
while  Milton  was  still  a  student  at  Cambridge. 

Fortunately  his  father's  means  made  a  fellowship 
unnecessary  for  him,  and  after  leaving  the  University, 
he  spent  five  years  at  Horton  in  study  and  in  writing. 
These  have  been  called  the  years  of  preparation,  but 
they  were,  as  well,  most  strikingly  years  of  production, 
during  which  were  composed  the  Comus,  Allegro,  Pen- 
scroso,  and  Lycidas. 

Milton  went  abroad  for  travel  in  April,  1638,  in  his 
thirtieth  year,  and  was  absent  from  home,  chiefly  in 
Italy,  a  year  and  three  months.  Italian  he  had  studied 
before  he  went  abroad,  and  while  in  Italy  he  read  with 
considerable  thoroughness  the  literature  of  that  coun- 
try. At  all  events,  he  mastered  the  language  suffi- 
ciently to  use  it  as  a  medium  of  expression  in  the 
sonnets  written  while  in  Italy ;  but  then  he  had  an  all- 
sufficient  cause  and  stimulus ;  in  his  own  words, 

This  is  the  language  in  which  love  delights. 

(CANZONE,  COWPER'S  TRANSLATION.) 


40  MILTON'S    SONNETS. 

As  in  the  twilight  brown,  on  hillside  bare, 

Useth  to  go  the  little  shepherd  maid, 

Watering  some  strange,  fair  plant,  poorly  displayed, 

Not  thriving  in  unwonted  soil  and  air, 

Far  from  its  native  springtime's  genial  care, 

So  on  my  ready  tongue  hath  love  assayed 

Of  a  strange  speech  to  wake  new  flower  and  blade. 

(MACDONALD'S  TRANSLATION.) 

The  few  passages  which  I  shall  read  from  the  Italian 
sonnets  will  be  in  translations;  of  such  I  had  six  to 
choose  from,  those  namely  of  Langhorne,  Cowper, 
Strutt,  Masson,  Pattison,  and  MacDonald ;  I  dare  say 
there  are  others.  Naturally  the  best  of  them  only 
approach  the  sonorous  quality  of  Milton's  own  Eng- 
lish, be  it  prose  or  verse. 

Five  Italian  sonnets  and  a  single  canzone,  like 
enough  to  the  sonnet  to  be  here  treated  of  among 
them,  written  while  in  Italy,  and  inspired  by  a  chaste 
passion  for  some  woman  of  the  city  of  Bologna,  whose 
name  we  do  not  know,  or  possibly  by  the  charm  of 
Italian  beauty  in  the  abstract,  although  I  do  not  be- 
lieve it,  were  one  result  of  his  foreign  tour.  We  have, 
apart  from  these  sonnets,  his  own  statement  of  the 
effect  that  this  '  new  type '  of  beauty  produced  upon 
him,  accustomed  all  his  life  to  the  quite  different  charm 
and  rosy  freshness  of  English  women,  when  he  speaks 
of  his  '  soul  tremulous  with  emotion '  by  reason  of  the 
loveliness  which  he  beheld. 

Yet  think  me  not  thus  dazzled  by  the  flow 
Of  golden  locks,  or  damask  cheek;  more  rare 
The  heart-felt  beauties  of  my  foreign  fair, 
A  mien  majestic,  with  dark  brows  that  show 
The  tranquil  lustre  of  a  lofty  mind. 

(SONNET  V.,  COWPER'S  TRANSLATION.) 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  41 

His  song  embraces  not  alone  the  praises  of  her  per- 
son, but  of  her  'gentle  spirit'  (III.),  'graciously 
lofty/ (IV.) 

Spirit  sweetly  displaying  itself, 

Of  winning  deeds  never  sparing, 

And  of  those  gifts  which  are  the  arrows  and  the  bow  of 

love 
In  that  region  where  thy  high  virtue  flowers. 

(SONNET  III.,  PATTISON'S  TRANSLATION.) 

From  what  follows  in  the  praise  of  her  voice  it  has 
been  conjectured  that  she  was  the  then  noted  singer, 
Leonora,  whom  he  heard  at  Rome,  and  to  whom  he 
wrote  three  Latin  epigrams,  Ad  Leonoram  Romae 
canentem,  the  first  of  which  may  be  freely  rendered — 

A  winged  angel  from  the  ethereal  ranks 
In  popular  belief  guards  each  man's  course. 
What  wonder,  Leonora,  if  to  thee 
There  fall  a  greater  honour,  for  thy  voice 
Proclaims  God  present  in  thee.     Either  God 
Or  some  bright  spirit  elect  from  heavenly  choir 
Sings  unseen  through  thy  throat,  creative  sings, 
And  teaches  easily  that  mortal  hearts 
Accustom  may  themselves  to  immortal  sounds. 
But  if  God  be  all  things,  through  all  diffused, 
In  thee  he  speaks,  all  else  inhabits  mute.* 


•Compare  with  the  first  two  lines  of  this  the  following  from  Samson 
Agonistes  : 

Chorus :  Go  and  the  Holy  One 

Of  Israel        •        •        •        • 

Send  thee  the  Angel  of  thy  Birth,  to  stand 

Fast  by  thy  side. 

(U.f  1427-32.) 


42  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

He  mentions  his  lady's  voice  more  than  once. 

O  when  those  lips  in  speech  so  matchless  move 

Or  frame  the  song  that  bids  the  forest  bend, 

Be  all  aware  who  fear,  alas!  to  love, 

And  from  the  enchantress  every  sense  defend ; 

Reason  can  only  save,  ere  yet  desire 

With  amorous  flame  the  inmost  bosom  fire. 

(SONNET  III.,  STRUTT'S  TRANSLATION.) 

And  again  '  from  her  lips '  comes 

Song  whose  sweet  control 

Down  from  her  sphere  the  labouring  moon  might  bow. 
(SONNET  V.,  STRUTT'S  TRANSLATION.) 

The  epigrams  to  Leonora  and  the  praise  of  this 
lady's  voice  indicate  another  of  Milton's  tastes,  and 
one  of  his  strongest,  his  love  of  music.  He  had  re- 
ceived instruction  in  music  and  the  encouragement  of 
his  father,  who  was  a  graduate  of  Oxford,  and  was 
devoted  to  music,  being  himself  a  composer  whose 
work  was  known  and  recognized  as  4  value  in  his  day. 
Comus  had  been  written  for  a  musical  pageant,  or 
mask,  at  the  request  of  the  composer,  Harry  Lawes, 
to  whom  Milton  long  after  dedicated  the  sonnet, 

Harry,  whose  tuneful  and  well  measured  song 

(SONNET  XIV.) 

and  in  Paradise  Lost   he  repeatedly  dwells  upon  the 
delights  and  inspiration  of  Music :  in  fact  the  rhythm 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  43 

and  roll  of  verse  in  that  poem  are  in  a  certain  way 
themselves  an  achievement  in  music  of  no  mean  order. 
When  he  was  writing  Paradise  Lost,  Milton  spent  a 
portion  of  every  day  at  the  organ ;  it  was  his  never 
failing  inspiration ;  with  its  notes  was  his  mind  in 
uninterrupted  accord.  The  full  tones  and  ponderous 
sweep  of  harmonious  sounds  in  Paradise  Lost  are  just 
as  much  a  triumph  of  art,  as  the  choice  of  words  to 
which  that  music  is  the  accompaniment,  or  the  majestic 
imagery  that  adorns  it,  or  the  grand  and  perfect  design 
to  which  all  its  parts  and  qualities  are  subservient. 

Besides  sitting  an  hour  at  the  organ  every  day, 
Milton  often  played  upon  the  bass  viol,  and  his  wife 
sang  to  his  accompaniment.  Her  voice  he  found 
sweet ;  it  is  not  strange,  however,  that  with  his  sensi- 
tive and  accurate  ear,  hers  seemed  not  altogether  fault- 
less. There  may  be  degrees  of  excellence  in  melody ; 
harmony  to  a  correct  ear  can  be  only  good  or  bad. 

But  to  return  to  the  Italian  sonnets.  There  is  a 
passage  from  Walter  Savage  Landor  in  which  he  says 
of  Milton,  '  It  may  be  doubted  whether  the  Creator 
ever  created  one  altogether  so  great ;  taking  into  our 
view  at  once  (as  much  indeed  as  can  at  once  be  taken 
into  it)  his  manly  virtues,  his  superhuman  genius,  his 
zeal  for  truth,  for  true  piety,  true  freedom,  his  elo- 
quence in  displaying  it,  his  contempt  of  personal 
power,  his  glory  and  exaltation  in  his  country's.' 
Whether  the  estimate  is  an  exaggerated  one,  we  need 
not  here  examine;  such,  in  Landor's  deliberate  opin- 
ion, this  young  scholar  afterward  proved  himself, 
whom  we  now  see  writing  love  sonnets  in  Italian  to 
an  unknown  beauty.  Bearing  in  mind  the  Milton  that 


44 


MILTON'S   SONNETS. 


was  to  be,  had  ever  woman  laid  at  her  feet  more  pre- 
cious offering  than  this  from  him? 

> 

To  you,  lady,  I  offer  in  deep  devotion 

The  lowly  gift  of  my  heart, — a  heart  which  in  many  a  trial 

I  have  found  faithful,  intrepid,  loyal,  discreet,  good, 

A  source  of  gracious  thought. 

When  the  great  world  roars,  and  thunder  bursts  around, 

With  itself  this  heart  arms  itself,  as  with  solid  adamant, 

Secure  from  violence  or  from  envy, 

From  all  vulgar  fears  and  hopes, 

Though  devoted  to  genius,  to  high  worth, 

To  the  sounding  lyre,  and  the  muse's  service. 

(SONNET  VII.,  PATTISON'S  TRANSLATION.) 

We  cannot  but  feel  glad  that  when  Milton  was 
brought  into  the  presence  of  splendid  Italian  beauty 
he  fell  deeply  in  love.  It  is  so  pleasant  to  feel  that  he 
was  a  man  as  well  as  a  Titan.  Every  biographical 
touch  that  makes  him  the  more  human,  makes  us  love 
him  the  more ;  and  consequently  heightens  our  enjoy- 
ment of  what  he  wrote.  I  think  even  that  our  regard 
for  him  increases  a  little  when  we  learn  that  he  was 
skilled  with  the  broadsword,  and  prided  himself  on 
being  more  than  a  match  for  a  larger  man  than  him- 
self; it  was  such  a  purely  personal,  harmless  vanity. 

Certainly  those  who  have  regarded  him  as  unappre- 
ciative  of  woman  could  not  be  familiar  with  his  English 
sonnets,  four  of  which  are  addressed  in  noble  apprecia- 
tion to  her,  or  still  less  with  the  graceful  homage  of 
the  Italian  Sonnets,  the  natural  tribute  of  an  idealist  to 
perfection. 

It  is  not  of  slight  importance  that  while  being  one  of 


MILTON'S  SONNETS. 


45 


the  three  great  epic  poets  of  the  world,  Milton  was  also 
a  man,  and  not  at  all  a  dull,  dusty  scholar,  irresponsive 
to  beauty,  except  of  the  shadowy  sort,  fit  only  to  write 
about.  Susceptibility  to  the  charm  of  woman  he  had 
without  doubt;  Johnson  or  Macaulay  (an  evil  associa- 
tion of  names  when  the  value  of  an  opinion  upon 
Milton  or  Dante  is  at  issue)  says  that  he  possessed 
the  warmth  of  temperament  of  an  eastern  lord  of  the 
harem.  That  may  be,  but  he  had  himself  in  most 
excellent  control.  Burns  without  question  had  a  sim- 
ilar temperament,  but  what  impresses  us  above  any- 
thing else  in  his  character  is  the  vigorous  human 
sympathy  that  he  had  with  every  man  or  woman 
with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  It  is  not  the  first 
thing,  by  any  means,  that  strikes  us  in  Milton.  He 
was  responsive  to  grandeur  of  character,  to  beauty,  to 
the  charms  of  sex  and  womanliness,  but  I  do  not  think 
his  sympathies  with  mere  human  kind  were  very  sensi- 
tive; in  fact  he  was  not  only  slightly,  but  supremely 
contemptuous  of  the  crowd. 

The  common  rout 
That  wandring  loose  about, 
Grow  up  and  perish  as  the  summer  fly. 

(Samson  Agonistes,  674-6. ) 

Or  as  he  says  elsewhere, 

A  herd  confus'd, 
A  miscellaneous  rabble,  who  extol 

Things  vulgar. 

(P.  R.,  III., 49.) 

When  we  give  due  weight  to  a  quality  of  Milton 
which  the  most  competent  critics  and  commentators 


46  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

have  not  failed  to  observe,  the  identification  of  himself 
with  whatever  character  he  is  delineating,  be  it  Lucifer 
or  Messiah ;  Samson,  or  Adam,  or  the  '  affable  Arch- 
angel ' ;  — a  quality  not  injurious  to  the  Epic  although 
it  would  be  fatal  to  the  Drama, — and  when  we  observe 
that  it  is  from  the  mouth  of  Christ,  tempted  by  Satan 
in  the  Wilderness,  that  the  words  of  this  latter  quota- 
tion proceed,  we  can  realize  somewhat  the  contempt 
with  which  he  regarded  the  mere  'breathers'  of  man- 
kind, 'heads  without  name,  no  more  remembered'. 

For  what  is  glory  but  the  blaze  of  fame, 

The  people's  praise,  if  always  praise  unmixt  ? 

And  what  the  people  but  a  herd  confus'd, 

A  miscellaneous  rabble,  who  extol 

Things  vulgar,  and  well  weighed,  scarce  worth  the  praise  ? 

They  praise  and  they  admire  they  know  not  what, 

And  know  not  whom,  but  as  one  leads  the  other; 

And  what  delight  to  be  by  such  extoll'd, 

To  live  upon  their  tongues  and  be  their  talk, 

Of  whom  to  be  dispraised  were  no  small  praise  ? 

********* 

Th'  intelligent  among  them  and  the  wise 
Are  few,  and  glory  scarce  of  few  is  raised. 

(P.  R.,  in.,  47-590 

While  he  was  Latin  Secretary  in  London,  he  lived, 
as  he  wrote  a  correspondent,  '  very  close.'  Words- 
worth was  quite  fitted  to  sympathize  with  this  quality, 
for  outside  of  his  shepherds  and  cottagers,  whom  he 
regarded  as  his  discovery  and  in  a  way  as  belonging 
to  him,  he  troubled  himself  very  little  about  the  out- 
side world  ;  what  he  says  of  shunning  personal  gossip 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  47 

in  his  own  case,  indicates  a  similar  aloofness  of  temper- 
ament ; 

Nor  can  I  not  believe  but  that  thereby 
Great  gains  are  mine ;  for  thus  I  live  remote 
From  evil  speaking ;  rancor,  never  sought, 
Comes  to  me  not,  malignant  truth  or  lie. 

For  humanity  his  love  was  boundless  ;  the  individual 
with  his  personalities  and  limitations  often  failed  to 
interest  him. 

You  remember  what  Wordsworth  says  of  Milton  in 
his,  alas  !  too  well-known  sonnet, 

Thy  soul  was  like  a  star,  and  dwelt  apart ; 

Thou  hadst  a  voice  whose  sound  was  like  the  sea ; 

Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic,  free. 

This  solitariness  of  character  is  a  quality  of  Milton 
not  to  be  disregarded.  He  was  devoted  to  his  friends 
but  not  desirous  of  extending  their  number,  pleased 
rather  with  '  contemplation  and  profound  dispute '  than 
with  the  refreshment  and  inspiration  derived  by  many, 
notably  so  in  the  case  of  Burns,  from  human  contact 
and  sympathy. 

Milton  never  tired,  we  are  told,  of  reading  what  he 
had  written,  in  which  again  he  was  like  Wordsworth, 
and  preserved  everything  from  his  pen,  even  school- 
boy exercises  of  no  value  to  literature.  In  this,  as 
Mark  Pattison  observed,  he  was  the  direct  opposite  of 
Shelley,  who  could  not  bear  ever  to  see  a  thing  after 
he  had  once  finished  it.  And  there  may  be  a  profound 


48  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

significance  underneath  this  simple  difference.  What 
came  from  Milton's  pen  was  the  product  of  a  mind, 
before  everything  else  full  of  health  and  vigor,  and  of 
that  mind  at  its  period  of  greatest  health  and  vigor, 
and  under  perfect  control.  In  a  lesser  degree  this 
is  also  true  of  Burns  and  of  Wordsworth.  Shelley, 
while  excelling  perhaps  in  throbbing  intensity  of  feel- 
ing the  poetry  of  any  one  of  them,  produces  in  his 
reader  a  sense  of  unrest  and  pain.  No  mind  could 
have  been  so  sensitive  to  this  as  his  own,  and  a  thing 
once  finished,  his  greatest  delight  was  to  rush  into 
fresh  intellectual  occupation. 

This  '  tumultuous  madness '  was  not  at  all  a  quality 
of  Milton's  mind ;  what  came  from  it  was  the  product 
of  *  sober  and  sustained  elevation  of  thought.'  His 
'unpremeditated  verse,'  as  he  characterizes  it,  the  off- 
spring of  a  mind  dwelling 

On  thoughts,  that  voluntary  move 
Harmonious  numbers, 

was  by  no  means  always  at  his  command,  but  when  he 
was  in  the  vein  he  wrote  with  perfect  ease  and  com- 
posure of  spirit;  in  fact,  one  quality  that  is  stamped 
on  the  entire  poetical  work  of  his  maturity  as  fully  as 
any  other,  is  calmness  and  repose. 

Emerson's  famous  saying  that  'character  is  higher 
than  intellect,'  was  never  more  fully  realized  than  in 
Milton ;  before  him  we  stand  in  the  presence  of  con- 
stant and  commanding  force  of  character.  In  reading 
Milton  we  feel  that  the  man  was  greater  than  the  poet. 
The  very  period  of  his  life  that  we  are  considering, 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  49 

demonstrates  that,  if  it  needs  demonstration.  He  de- 
liberately sacrificed  the  artistic  side  of  his  genius  for 
twenty  years  to  a  life  of  humble  usefulness.  It  was 
more  than  craving  for  artistic  cultivation  and  expression 
that  he  sacrificed ;  he  anticipated  with  perfect  correct- 
ness the  verdict  of  posterity  in  regard  to  his  own 
powers, — he  had  no  doubt  whatever  but  that  he 
was  equal  to  the  production  of  an  Epic  Poem  such  as 
England  had  never  seen,  and  which  should  serve  as  a 
fountain  of  delight  and  inspiration  for  all  time, — yet 
well  aware  of  the  exalted  task  which  it  was  his  privi- 
lege to  perform, 

(His)  heart 
The  lowliest  duties  on  herself  did  lay. 

and  he  stayed  his  hand  from  the  performance  of  that 
great  work,  that  he  might  do  exactly  what  our  ances- 
tors did,  when  they  left  their  homes  and  a  civilized  coun- 
try for  the  wilderness  and  freedom  to  worship  God, — 
that  he  might,  in  short,  with  his  whole  strength,  be  a 
Puritan. 

Only  once  in  a  year  or  two  during  this  time  did  he 
write  in  verse  at  all,  and  then  some  special  occasion 
aroused  him  to  this  form  of  expression.  There  can  be 
no  question  but  that  what  he  did  write  freed  from  the 
constraints  and  limitations  of  prose,  is  of  the  utmost 
value  to  us,  if  we  wish  to  judge  of  his  ideals  during 
this  period. 

It  is  impossible  to  do  justice  to  the  Sonnets  without 

a  familiarity  with  Paradise  Lost ;  that  is  Milton,  and 

everything  else  that  he  wrote  must  be  considered  in 

relation  to  it,  and  besides  its  own  value,  has  an  added 

4 


50  M/LTON'S    SONNETS. 

and  peculiar  interest  attaching  to  it  as  the  utterance 
of  the  same  mind  that  evolved  that  epic  in  its  full 
grandeur  and  symmetry.  The  Sonnets  have  this  vir- 
tue, at  all  events,  which  belongs  to  no  other  of  his 
poetical  work,  namely  that  they  have  been  too  often 
overlooked  as  fragmentary  and  unimportant. 

Among  the  English  sonnets  only  one  was  written 
before  the  temporary  blight  of  an  unfortunate  marriage 
fell  upon  his  life,  and  before  he  was  hopelessly  involved 
in  pamphlet  writing. 

Milton  returned  from  the  continent  in  August,  1639, 
took  rooms  in  London,  and  undertook  the  education  of 
his  two  nephews,  Edward  and  John  Phillips,  the  sons 
of  his  only  sister  Anne.  He  had  escaped  one  danger 
which  beset  a  scholar  at  that  time  more  than  now,  the 
acceptance  of  a  University  fellowship.  The  man  who 
for  civil  and  personal  liberty  was  willing  to  sacrifice 
everything  in  the  world,  and  who,  under  what  appears 
to  have  been  a  mistaken  sense  of  duty,  actually  did 
make  the  greatest  sacrifice  that  poet  could  be  called 
upon  to  offer,  a  sacrifice  of  nothing  less  than  sustained 
poetic  cultivation  and  expression  during  twenty  years 
of  his  life,  the  exercise  of  that  'one  talent  which  is 
death  to  hide,'  was  not  the  man  to  be  bound  by  the 
restraints  and  limitations  of  a  University  fellowship. 
That  would  have  given  us  a  more  learned  scholar,  but 
that  scholar  would  never  have  written  Paradise  Lost. 
There  can  be  no  question  but  that  at  London  and  in 
the  very  whirl  of  revolutionary  excitement,  he  felt  the 
force  of  that  revolution  as  he  could  not  have  done 
had  he  been  instead  a  Cambridge  scholar  at  his  ease 
during  all  that  time. 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  51 

With  knowledge  of  the  event,  we  may  regard  his 
acceptance  of  the  Latin  Secretaryship  as  a  mistake,  so 
far  as  the  value  of  his  services  to  the  Commonwealth 
was  involved,  because  we  can  now  see  that  his  pam- 
phlets, written  in  a  spirit  of  contention  altogether  un- 
worthy of  the  man,  full  of  invective  and  of  ill  feeling, 
had  no  influence  whatever  beyond  his  own  party,  and 
were  of  trifling  service  to  the  elevation  of  the  cause  of 
liberty.  Milton,  however,  was  desperately  in  earnest 
when  he  wrote  them,  and  was  thinking  much  more  of 
vigorously  attacking  his  adversary  than  of  anything 
else  whatever ;  he  was  in  the  midst  of  fight,  with  pas- 
sions aroused,  and  it  is  hardly  fair  for  us  to  judge  him 
in  cold  blood  two  centuries  and  a  half  later. 

In  Italy  he  had  received  marked  attention  as  a  dis- 
tinguished stranger  and  poet,  had  experienced  the 
hospitality  of  the  Italian  Academies,  and  of  learned 
men  in  Florence,  Rome,  and  Naples.  These  were  the 
palmy  days  of  his  whole  life ;  never  again  was  he  to  be 
so  much  petted  and  admired.  He  had  come  home 
brimful  of  ambition,  and  we  have  in  his  own  handwrit- 
ing, written  within  a  year  or  two  after  his  return,  and 
probably  begun  immediately  after  that  event,  a  long 
list  of  possible  subjects  for  an  epic  poem,  mask,  or 
drama,  in  which  precedence  was  given  to  the  subject 
of  Paradise  Lost, —  a  poem  destined,  however,  not  to  be 
written  for  twenty  years,  and  mentioned  here  only  to 
show  the  bent  of  his  mind  at  this  time.  After  he  had 
decided  upon  the  epic  form,  (in  1642),  we  have  his 
own  statement  that  he  did  not  consider  himself  as 
fitted  yet,  or  as  sufficiently  experienced  and  mature,  for 
its  production. 


52  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  tragedy  of  the  Revo- 
lution was  now  in  full  progress.  The  royal  army  was 
defeated  by  the  Scotch  Presbyterians  in  August,  1640, 
and  the  Long  Parliament  met  in  November  of  that 
year. 

No  man  in  England  was  in  fuller  sympathy  with  the 
Puritan  cause  than  Milton,  or  more  alive  to  the  abuses 
in  the  church  than  he.  In  Lycidas,  written  three  years 
before,  he  had  characterized  the  clergy  in  that  scathing 
lament  of  Peter, 

How  well  could  I  have  spar'd  for  thee,  young  swain  — 

ending  in  the  prophetic  lines, 

But  that  two-handed  engine  at  the  door, 
Stands  ready  to  smite  once,  and  smite  no  more. 


So  far  as  in  him  lay,  Milton  assisted  at  that  retribu- 
tion. 

In  1641  he  published  hisfirst  pamphlet,  (I.),  Of  Refor- 
mation touching  Church  Discipline  in  England,  and 
the  Causes  that  hitherto  have  hindered  it,  being  in  two 
books  and  attacking  the  Bishops  and  the  Established 
Church.  After  this  followed  in  quick  succession,  (II.), 
Of  Prelaticall  Episcopacy,  being  a  reply  to  the  most 
learned  man  in  the  English  Church,  Archbishop  Usher, 
who  had  written  a  pamphlet  called  'The  Apostolical 
Institution  of  Episcopacy/  and,  (III.),  The  Reason  of 
Church  Government  urged  against  Prelacy.  Then 
came,  in  1642,  (IV.),  Animadversions  upon  the  Remon- 
strant's Defence  against  Smectymnuus,  which  was  an 


MILTON1  S  SONNETS.  53 

attack  upon  Bishop  Hall,  and  to  say  the  least  a  heated 
and  undignified  attack.  One  more  pamphlet  he  wrote 
in  this  debate,  (V.),  The  Apology  for  Smectymnuus. 

These  are  dreary  reading  to-day,  although  they  con- 
tain passages  of  noble  English,  and  the  Reason  of 
Church  Government  a  distinct  promise  of  some  great 
work  yet  to  be  done. 

Milton  was  in  the  heat  of  the  fight,  and  when  he 
wrote  the  sonnet  upon  the  Intended  Assault  on  the 
City,  which  is  the  next  which  we  have  to  consider,  and 
had  no  cause  to  accuse  himself  of  being  a  Laodocean, 
of  living  in  scholarly  ease  and  security,  amusing  him- 
self with  the  composition  of  verses,  while  others  were 
actually  bearing  arms  in  defence  of  liberty.  He  was 
doing  the  best  that  in  him  lay,  though  with  infinite 
temerity  when  he  attacked  a  man  of  Usher's  erudition  in 
church  literature;  'Being  willing,'  he  says,  'to  help  the 
Puritans  who  were  inferior  to  the  Prelates  in  learning,' 
although  '  not  disposed  to  this  manner  of  writing, 
wherein  knowing  myself  inferior  to  myself,  led  by  the 
genial  powers  of  nature  to  another  task,  I  have  the 
use,  as  I  may  account  it,  but  of  my  left  hand.' 

Such,  then,  were  the  circumstances  of  his  life :  he  was 
living  in  London,  teaching  his  nephews,  and  doing  his 
best  to  help  the  cause  of  reformation  with  his  pen,  when 
the  royal  army  advanced  upon  the  city,  and  was  met 
almost  in  its  suburbs,  on  the  13  Nov.,  1642,  by  the 
parliamentary  forces  under  Essex. 

Others  have  dwelt  upon  their  chosen  theme,  Milton 
the  Puritan,  Milton  the  Republican,  Milton  the  In- 
spired Poet  and  Seer;  it  may  be  permitted  me  to  ob- 
serve that  if  any  single  incident  in  his  life  revealed 


54  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

Milton  the  Scholar,  we  see  it  here.  It  was  the  Schol- 
ar's instinct  that  made  him  in  a  time  of  excitement  and 
danger,  while  others  were  bearing  arms  or  were  run- 
ning about  the  streets  for  news,  quietly  to  sit  down, 
and  seeking  relief  from  the  anxieties  of  the  hour,  to 
express  himself  with  calmness  and  dignity  in  verse. 

With  the  two  armies  confronting  one  another,  forty 
thousand  men  in  arms,  within  a  few  miles  of  his  door, 
it  took  splendid  composure  of  mind  quietly  to  write 
these  lines,  his  first  expression  in  English  verse  since 
Lycidas  was  written,  five  years  before. 

Captain,  or  Colonel,  or  Knight  in  arms, 

Whose  chance  on  these  defenceless  doors  may  seize, 

If  deed  of  honour  did  thee  ever  please, 

Guard  them,  and  him  within  protect  from  harms. 

He  can  requite  thee,  for  he  knows  the  charms 

That  call  fame  on  such  gentle  acts  as  these, 

And  he  can  spread  thy  name  o'er  land  and  seas 

Whatever  clime  the  sun's  bright  circle  warms. 

Lift  not  thy  spear  against  the  Muse's  bower; 

The  great  Emathian  conquerer  bid  spare 

The  house  of  Pindarus,  when  temple  and  tower 

Went  to  the  ground ;  and  the  repeated  air 

Of  sad  Electra's  poet  had  the  power 

To  save  the  Athenian  walls  from  ruin  bare. 

How  crisp,  and  strong,  and  resonant  the  verses  roll ! 

I  will  not  enter  into  the  simple  elucidation  of  the  schol- 
arly references  of  the  sestet ;  what  I  wish  to  emphasize 
is  that  Milton's  having  written  the  sonnet  at  all  is  a  sign 
of  intellectual  serenity  superior  to  anything  which  the 
sonnet  itself  contains,  although  that  is  very  fine.  Ob- 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  55 

serve,  however,  the  perfectly  matter  of  course  way  in 
which  this  young  scholar, 

Young  in  years,  but  in  sage  counsel  old, 

ranks  himself  without  vainglory,  as  without  apology, 
with  Pindar  and  with  Euripides. 

From  the  time  of  his  marriage  until  1658,  the  year  in 
which  the  last  sonnet  was  written,  and  when  we  know 
he  was  writing  continuously  upon  Paradise  Lost,  Mil- 
ton wrote  about  twenty  pamphlets  in  English  and 
Latin,  half  of  them  on  church  matters  and  several  at 
the  order  of  the  Council,  whose  servant  he  became  in 
1649.  Charles  I.  was  beheaded  in  January  of  that 
year,  and  on  1 5  March,  Milton  took  the  oath  of  office 
as  Latin  Secretary  to  the  Committee  of  Foreign  Af- 
fairs, which  was  composed  of  six  members  of  the 
Council  of  State.  The  position  was  not  an  important 
one.  There  was  an  English  Secretary,  whose  services 
were  deemed  of  twice  the  value  of  Milton's,  and  he 
was  not  intrusted  with  the  original  composition  of  dis- 
patches except  in  a  few  instances.  The  most  impor- 
tant thing  that  he  did  in  this  capacity  was  to  write  in 
Latin,  among  other  pamphlets  in  the  same  tongue,  his 
Defence  of  the  English  People,  first  and  second,  yet 
these  have  slight  value  for  us  to-day,  and  no  one 
thinks  of  reading  them. 

Milton  accepted  the  position  from  a  mistaken  sense 
of  duty,  but  it  is  not  impossible  that  together  with  the 
sense  of  duty,  and  acting  as  an  unconscious  motive,  he 
felt  a  temptation, — peculiarly  hard  for  a  scholar  to  resist, 
for  one  who  had  seen  but  little  of  the  world  of  affairs, 


56  M/LTON'S   SONNETS. 

and  for  a  man  of  his  courageous  temperament, — that 
of  an  active  career  and  of  contact  and  acquaintance 
with  the  leaders  of  Parliament  and  the  State. 

In  the  Paradise  Regained  one  of  the  temptations 
offered  by  Satan  is  a  knowledge  of  the  world  and  of 
courts, 

Best  school  of  best  experience. 

With  his  imagination  fired  by  the  success  of  the  Par- 
liamentary cause,  could  he  help  feeling  the  full  entice- 
ment of  the  opportunity  ?  He  no  doubt  would  desire 
at  the  end  of  his  life  to  be  able  to  say  as  Chaucer  had 
said,  looking  back  over  his  own,  two  centuries  and 
more  before  that  time, 

It  doth  mine  herte  boote 

That  I  have  had  my  world  as  in  my  time. 

Who  can  say  that  he  chose  not  wisely  ?  It  may  have 
taken  participation  in  the  intensest  life  of  his  time  to 
fire  his  genius  to  the  portrayal  of  the  arch-rebel,  Luci- 
fer; just  as  blindness  itself,  although  profound  misfor- 
tune to  the  man,  was  probably  an  inspiration  and  gave 
pathetic  sympathy  with  the  subject  when  he  wrote 
Samson  Agonistes ;  but  it  is  hard  for  us  to  say  which 
seems  the  greater  apparent  misfortune,  that  he  should 
be  blind  at  forty-three,  or  that  he  should  be  forced  to 
forego  for  twenty  years,  with  the  risk  of  never  doing 
it,  the  accomplishment  of  that  great  work  in  literature 
which  he  knew  himself  fitted  by  genius  to  construct, 
and  to  the  performance  of  which  he  felt  his  life  to  be 
dedicated. 


AffLTON'S   SONNETS.  57 

Phillips  tells  us  in  his  life  of  his  uncle  that  one  of 
Milton's  friends  at  this  time  was  the  wife  of  a  Captain 
Hobson,  the  Lady  Margaret  Ley  (or  Leigh),  daugh- 
ter of  the  first  Earl  of  Marlborough,  who  had  been 
Lord  High  Treasurer,  and  President  of  the  Council 
under  James  and  Charles  I.,  and  who  had  been  an 
active  supporter  of  the  Parliamentary  cause.  Milton 
addressed  a  sonnet  to  her : 

Daughter  to  that  good  Earl,  once  President 
Of  England's  council  and  her  treasury.  • 

Then  follows  praise  of  her  father,  the  sestet  conclud- 
ing— 

Though  later  born  than  to  have  known  the  days, 
Wherein  your  father  flourished,  yet  by  you, 
Madam,  methinks  I  see  him  living  yet ; 
So  well  your  words  his  noble  virtues  praise, 
That  all  both  judge  you  to  relate  them  true, 
And  to  possess  them,  honoured  Margaret. 

There  is  a  quiet  dignity  about  this  sonnet  that  is  charm- 
ing. Structurally,  it  is  correct  in  one  detail  of  which 
the  most  of  Milton's  sonnets  are  regardless,  namely, 
in  the  observance  of  the  pause  between  the  octave  and 
sestet.  It  may  be  said  that  the  last  line  comes  as  near 
the  epigrammatic  ending  without  actually  erring,  as 
may  with  safety  be  approached. 

Shakspere's  not  unusual  practice  was  to  conclude 
with  an  epigram,  the  form  which  he  employed,  of  four 
quatrains  and  a  couplet  favouring  this  practice.  But 
as  has  been  said  before,  the  English  Sonnet  was  in  its 


5 8  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

infancy  in  his  day.  Countless  experiments  have  taught 
us  since  that  what  should  be  aimed  at  in  a  sonnet  is  the 
expression  of  a  single  thought  or  emotion,  the  forma- 
tion of  a  compact,  well-rounded,  organic  whole,  and 
not  a  brilliant  finish  which  may  detract  at  all  from  the 
force  and  relative  importance  of  any  preceding  part. 

The  three  sonnets  addressed  to  Fairfax,  Cromwell, 
and  Vane,  are  of  peculiar-  interest.  That  On  the  Lord 
General  Fairfax  at  the  Siege  of  Colchester, — 

Fairfax,  whose  name  in  arms  through  Europe  rings, 

is  an  expression  of  delight  and  of  congratulation  at  the 
success  of  the  Independent  army,  rather  than  a  per- 
sonal address  to  the  general,  or  eulogy  of  the  man ; 
the  same  may  be  said  of  the  sonnet  addressed  to 
Cromwell.  It  is  the  occasion  that  Milton  has  in  mind 
rather  than  the  person,  and  the  closing  verses  show 
that,  Milton -like,  he  was  not  at  all  disposed  to  rest  sat- 
isfied with  victory  over  the  Royalists,  while  Parliament 
acted  from  any  motives  other  than  the  most  patriotic 
and  the  most  pure. 

O  yet  a  nobler  task  awaits  thy  hand 

(For  what  can  war  but  endless  war  still  breed  ?) 

Till  truth  and  right  from  violence  be  freed, 

And  public  faith  cleared  from  the  shameful  brand 

Of  public  fraud.     In  vain  doth  valour  bleed, 

While  avarice  and  rapine  share  the  land. 

The  Siege  of  Colchester  was  in  July  and  August, 
1648  ;  Charles  was  beheaded  in  the  following  January. 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  59 

At  this  time  Milton  was  living  quietly  in  London,  per- 
haps teaching  his  nephews,  his  time  fully  occupied ;  at 
all  events  we  know  that  he  was  busy  in  the  compila- 
tion of  a  Latin  Dictionary,  in  the  writing  of  a  History 
of  England  from  the  most  remote  times,  in  the  forma- 
tion of  a  Digest  of  Christian  Doctrine  from  the  Bible, 
and  in  the  metrical  translation  of  nine  Psalms  from  the 
Hebrew. 

His  next  sonnet,  addressed  to  Cromwell,  was  not 
written  for  four  years.  This  was  after  he  had  become 
Latin  Secretary,  and  when  he  had  been  totally  blind 
for  little  more  than  a  month,  on  account  of  which  he 
was  not  for  the  time  being  in  attendance  at  the  Coun- 
cil meetings.  He  took  this  way  of  urging  Cromwell, 
who  was  a  member  of  the  Committee  before  whom 
the  matter  came,  to  oppose  a  ministry  supported  by 
tithes,  to  the  full  extent  of  his  influence  and  power; 
Cromwell,  however,  did  not  regard  the  matter  in  the 
same  light  as  did  Milton. 

During  the  time  which  had  elapsed  since  the  sonnet 
to  Fairfax,  he  had  written  the  then  important  pamphlet 
on  The  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates,  which  was 
of  influence  in  fixing  the  choice  of  the  Council  upon 
him  for  Latin  Secretary ;  after  the  appointment  he  had 
been  fully  occupied  with  the  new  duties  of  his  office 
and  in  writing  pamphlets  for  the  Council. 

One  naturally  turns  to  the  sonnet  on  Cromwell  for 
Milton's  estimate  of  the  other's  greatness ;  for  that  we 
must  look  elsewhere.  Although  in  matters  of  scholar- 
ship Cromwell  was  a  barbarian,  and  there  could  be  no 
sympathy  between  him  and  Milton  in  such  matters,  yet 
in  what  concerned  religion  and  the  Commonwealth  of 


60  MILTON'S  SONNETS. 

England,  Milton  was  in  close  sympathy  with  him. 
There  is  no  evidence  to  show,  however,  that  the  two 
men  were  ever  friends  or  even  acquaintances.  Offi- 
cially, Milton  held  a  humble  position  under  the  Com- 
monwealth ;  Hume's  quotation  from  Whitlocke,  Lord 
Keeper  of  the  Seals,  is  familiar,  in  which  he  speaks 
of  '  one  Milton,  as  he  calls  him,  a  blind  man,  who  was 
employed  in  translating  a  treaty  with  Sweden  into 
Latin;'*  Milton  was  yet  unknown.  This  sonnet  to 
Cromwell,  as  the  title  in  the  original  manuscript  copy 
indicates,  was  written  rather  invoking  aid  than  in  a 
spirit  of  adulation.  Its  title  reads  —  To  the  Lord 
General  Cromwell,  May  1652,  on  the  Proposals  of  Cer- 
tain Ministers  at  the  Committee  for  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel.  Its  purpose  was  to  defeat  the  Presbyterians 
who  were  desirous  of  providing  a  maintenance  by 
tithes  for  their  church.  Milton  had  this,  as  well  as 
other  bonds,  in  common  with  Fox — to  the  pure  spir- 
ituality of  whose  nature  his  own  lofty  and  ideal 
poetic  instincts,  blended  with  sound  and  unswerving 
character,  bore  close  resemblance — that  he  regarded 
with  horror  a  ministry  supported  by  tithes,  deeming 
spiritual  matters  separate  from,  and  altogether  above 
matters  of  state. 

9 

Cromwell,  our  chief  of  men,  who  through  a  cloud 

Not  of  war  only,  but  detractions  rude, 

Guided  by  faith  and  matchless  fortitude, 

To  peace  and  truth  thy  glorious  way  hast  ploughed, 

And  on  the  neck  of  crowned  fortune  proud 

Hast  reared  God's  trophies,  and  his  work  pursued, 

While  Darwen  stream,  with  blood  of  Scots  imbrued, 

*  Hume,  ch.  LXIII. 


MILTON'S  SONNETS.  6 1 

And  Dunbar  field,  resound  thy  praises  loud, 

And  Worcester's  laureate  wreath;  yet  much  remains 

To  conquer  still ;  peace  hath  her  victories 

No  less  renowned  than  war ;  new  foes  arise 

Threatening  to  bind  our  souls  with  secular  chains. 

Help  us  to  save  free  conscience  from  the  paw 

Of  hireling  wolves,  whose  gospel  is  their  maw.  * 

It  is  interesting  to  read,  in  connection  with  the  sonnet 
to  Cromwell,  Milton's  panegyric  of  him  in  the  Defensio 
Secunda,  published  two  years  later.  Fortunately  we 
have  a  translation  full  of  dignity  by  a  scholar,  appre- 
ciative of  elegant  Latin,  if  not  appreciative  and  approv- 
ing of  Milton,  by  Dr.  Johnson  himself.  'A  translation,' 
he  tells  us,  '  may  show  its  servility ;  but  its  elegance 
is  less  attainable.'  *  *  *  «  Caesar,  when  he  assumed 
the  perpetual  dictatorship,  had  not  more  servile  or  more 
elegant  flattery.' 

•  Compare  with  the  ending  of  this  sonnet  the  lines  from  Lycidas^ 

The  hungry  sheep  look  up  and  are  not  fed, 
But  swoln  with  wind,  and  the  rank  mist  they  draw, 
Rot  inwardly,  and  foul  contagion  spread: 
Besides  what  the  grim  wolf  with  privy  paw 
Daily  devours  apace,  and  nothing  said. 

(LI.,  125-129.) 

and  the  following  from  Paradise  Lost: 

Wolves  shall  succeed  for  teachers,  grievous  wolves, 

Who  all  the  sacred  mysteries  of  Heaven 

To  their  own  vile  advantages  shall  turn 

Of  lucre  and  ambition,  and  the  truth 

With  superstitions  and  traditions  taint. 

(LI.,  508-512.) 
A 


62  MILTON'S  SONNETS. 

'"We  were  left,"  says  Milton,  "to  ourselves;  the 
whole  national  interest  fell  into  your  hands,  and  subsists 
only  in  your  abilities.  To  your  virtue,  overpowering 
and  resistless,  every  man  gives  way,  except  some  who, 
without  equal  qualifications,  aspire  to  equal  honours, 
who  envy  the  distinctions  of  merit  greater  than  their 
own,  or  who  have  yet  to  learn,  that  in  the  coalition 
of  human  society  nothing  is  more  pleasing  to  God,  or 
more  agreeable  to  reason,  than  that  the  highest  mind 
should  have  the  sovereign  power.  Such,  sir,  are  you 
by  general  confession ;  such  are  the  things  achieved 
by  you,  the  greatest  and  most  glorious  of  our  country- 
men, the  director  of  our  public  councils,  the  leader  of 
unconquered  armies,  the  father  of  your  country;  for  by 
that  title  does  every  good  man  hail  you  with  sincere 
and  voluntary  praise."' 

The  Sonnet  to  Vane  forms  the  fourth  of  those,  which 
by  reason  of  their  republican  tone  could  not  be  pub- 
lished after  the  Restoration  with  Milton's  other  poems, 
the  year  before  his  death,  1673,  and  were  not  in  fact 
published  in  the  form  in  which  they  were  written  until  a 
century  after  their  composition,  1 752.  Milton's  nephew, 
Phillips,  issued  them  in  a  safe  but  garbled  edition  in 
1694. 

Sir  Henry  Vane, 

Vane,  young  in  years,  but  in  sage  councils  old, 

to  whom  this  was  addressed  was  at  the  time  a  member 
of  the  Council  of  State. 

It  seems  strange  to  speak  of  one  of  Milton's  sonnets 
as  addressed  to  an  American,  yet  we  are  not  overstep- 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  63 

ping  the  truth  in  saying  that  Vane  had  been  an  Amer- 
ican if  he  was  not  at  this  time.  He  came  here  with  the 
younger  Winthrop  on  his  second  visit  in  1635, — and  it 
was  alone  owing  to  an  unfortunate  disagreement  on  a 
doctrinal  point  of  religion  that  he  did  not  remain. 

Winthrop  says  '(He)  forsook  the  honours  and  pref- 
erments of  the  court,  to  enjoy  the  ordinances  of  Christ 
in  their  purity  here.' 

His  father,  at  the  time  the  son  came  here,  was  a 
Privy  Councillor  and  one  of  the  Secretaries  of  State, 
altogether  one  of  the  two  or  three  most  important 
men  in  England  at  that  time.  Before  the  younger 
Vane,  then  twenty- three  years  of  age,  had  been  here 
nine  months,  the  General  Court  elected  him  Governor 
of  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts,  as  she  called 
herself,  already  aspiring  to  be  a  Republic.  Unfortu- 
nately, at  a  very  critical  period  in  the  History  of  the 
Massachusetts  Colony,  when  the  permanence  of  her 
charter  was  threatened  by  Charles,  who  had  granted  it, 
on  which  charter  were  based  all  her  hopes  of  Independ- 
ence, Vane  entangled  himself  in  the  controversy  then 
active  on  Salvation  by  faith  or  works,  and  championed 
the  cause  of  the  famous  Mrs.  Ann  Hutchinson.  He  con- 
trived to  stir  up  very  heated  opposition  on  this  account, 
and  left  the  colony  in  disgust  after  his  failure  to  be 
reelected  and  after  he  had  been  here  less  than  two 
years.  He  became  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  under 
Cromwell,  and  ten  years  after  this  sonnet  was  written 
was  beheaded  by  Charles  II.,  (1662). 

Lord  Clarendon's  estimate  of  Vane  is  that  he  was  a 
fanatic ;  like  others  of  the  time,  he  was  an  enthusiast 
in  religion.  What  is  of  chief  interest  to  us,  is  that 


64  MILTON'S  SONNETS. 

to  him  Milton  awarded  praise  which   he  gave  to  no 
other  man  in  his  Sonnets. 

Vane,  young  in  years,  but  in  sage  council  old, 
Than  whom  a  better  Senator  ne'er  held 
The  helm  of  Rome,  when  gowns  not  arms  repelled 
The  fierce  Epirot  and  the  African  bold. 
*  *  * 

On  thy  firm  hand  religion  leans 
In  peace,  and  reckons  thee  her  eldest  son. 


When  Milton  wrote  his  famous  Sonnet  On  the  Late 
Massacre  in  Piedmont,  it  is  not  impossible  that  his 
mind  was  dwelling  again  on  the  theme  of  Paradise 
Lost.  Three  years  later  his  nephew  tells  us  that  he 
was  continuously  at  work  upon  it ;  a  fragment  of  ten 
lines  in  the  fourth  book  had  been  written  immediately 
after  his  return  from  Italy  in  1640,  as  the  opening 
lines  of  his  then  contemplated  tragedy  treating  of  the 
same  theme. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  same  feeling  pervades 
this  sonnet  which  is  the  life  and  atmosphere  of  Para- 
dise Lost.  That  is  primarily  and  above  all  else  a  work 
of  the  imagination,  and  possesses  the  richness  and 
grandeur  which  a  World's  Epic  should  possess ;  the 
sonnet  is  the  expression  of  powerful  feeling,  clothed  in 
simple,  homely  words.  What  I  do  mean  to  say  is  that 
this  sonnet  is  the  product  of  Milton's  genius  at  the  very 
height  of  its  powers,  and  is  in  every  way  worthy  of  the 
mind  that  so  soon  was  to  evolve  in  its  intricate  sim- 
plicity, in  its  grand  and  unconfused  proportions,  the 
poem  of  Paradise  Lost. 


MILTON'S  SONNETS.  65 

The  event  which  roused  Milton  to  this  'trumpet 
blast '  of  wrath,  to  the  solemn  invoking  of  God's  anger 
against  the  offenders,  was  the  massacre  of  three  hun- 
dred innocent  men,  women,  and  children  of  the  people 
known  as  Vaudois,  or  Waldenses,  living  well  up  in  the 
Alpine  Valleys  of  Piedmont  in  Italy.  The  Vaudois 
were  poor  peasants,  a  few  thousand  in  number,  who 
from  time  immemorial  had,  in  spite  of  persecution, 
refused  to  comply  with  the  demands  of  the  Romish 
church.  They  were  '  Protestants '  long  before  the 
Reformation,  and  as  such  were  peculiarly  dear  to  all 
Protestant  countries  when  the  atrocious  crime  of 
which  they  were  now  the  victims  was  committed.  This 
was  the  people 

Who  kept  (God's)  truth  so  pure  of  old, 

When  all  our  fathers  worshipped  stocks  and  stones. 

Their  valleys  were  a  part  of  the  possessions  of  the 
Duke  of  Savoy,  and  this  humble  folk  had  been  some- 
what spared  for  a  few  generations  from  great  perse- 
cution. The  present  Duke,  on  the  attainment  of  his 
majority,  determined  to  bring  them  into  the  church. 
Catholic  Friars  were  sent  among  them,  one  of  whom 
was  killed ;  thereupon  the  edict  went  forth  from  the 
Court  of  Turin  that  the  entire  population  of  nine  of 
their  communes  should  within  three  days,  unless  they 
pledged  themselves  to  enter  the  Romish  church  within 
twenty  days  thereafter,  remove  to  five  of  their  com- 
munes situated  higher  up  in  the  Alps.  Remonstrance 
to  the  Court  was  in  vain,  and  towards  the  end  of  April, 
still  a  time  of  snow  in  the  Alps,  the  threat  was  put  in 
5 


66  M/LTON'S   SONNETS. 

execution.  A  body  of  troops  sufficient  for  the  purpose 
was  sent  among  them,  and  for  eight  days  everything 
that  hatred  and  resistance  could  inspire,  or  brutal  cru- 
elty and  lust  suggest,  was  wreaked  on  these  poor  vil- 
lagers. Their  only  safety  was  in  flight  higher  up  the 
mountains,  where  without  sufficient  shelter  or  suste- 
nance, great  hardship  was  suffered.  A  circular  letter 
was  addressed  to  the  Protestant  Powers  of  Europe,  and 
the  news  of  the  massacre  reached  England  a  month 
later.  None  felt  the  calamity  more  than  Cromwell, 
who  said  that  it  came  as  '  near  his  heart  as  if  his  own 
nearest  and  dearest  had  been  concerned.' 

A  day  of  humiliation  was  appointed,  and  a  collection 
taken  for  their  relief,  amounting  to  more  than  six  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars  of  our  money  to-day,  thirty-five 
thousand  of  which  Cromwell  gave  from  his  own  purse. 
The  matter  became  that  of  chief  importance  in  the 
Council,  and  Milton  drew  up  no  less  than  eleven  letters 
in  Latin  to  the  Duke  of  Savoy,  the  King  of  France, 
the  Swiss  Cantons,  to  the  King  of  Sweden,  and  others, 
demanding  redress  and  invoking  aid. 

There  was,  as  I  have  said,  an  English  Secretary  to 
the  Council  of  State,  whose  duty  it  was  to  draw  up 
foreign  dispatches  which  the  Latin  Secretary  rendered 
into  Latin.  But  the  dispatches  in  this  case,  one  of  the 
few  instances  where  it  so  happened,  were  drawn  up  by 
the  Latin  Secretary  himself,  so  his  mind  was  full  of  the 
subject,  and  that  Secretary  being  Milton,  he  naturally 
sought  expression  for  profound  feeling  in  verse.  The 
result  was  that  he  then  wrote  what  critics  best  qualified 
to  judge  have  pronounced  the  most  magnificent  sonnet 
in  the  English  language.  Others  have  written  sonnets 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  67 

full  of  fine  poetic  feeling ;  among  the  sonnets  of  Shaks- 
pere,  Keats,  Wordsworth,  Mrs.  Browning,  and  Rosetti, 
may  be  found  those  just  as  full  of  intense  emotion  of  a 
different  sort,  and  possessing  charms  of  delicacy  which 
this  makes  no  attempt  to  attain  ;  but  this  before  every 
sonnet  in  the  Language  takes  precedence  for  force  and 
virility. 

Avenge,  O  Lord,  thy  slaughtered  saints,  whose  bones 
Lie  scattered  on  the  Alpine  mountains  cold ; 
Even  them,  who  kept  thy  truth  so  pure  of  old, 
When  all  our  fathers  worshipped  stocks  and  stones, 
Forget  not :  in  thy  book  record  their  groans, 
Who  were  thy  sheep,  and  in  their  ancient  fold 
Slain  by  the  bloody  Piemontese,  that  rolled 
Mother  with  infant  down  the  rocks ;  their  moans 
The  vales  redoubled  to  the  hills  and  they 
To  heaven.     Their  martyred  blood  and  ashes  sow 
O'er  all  the  Italian  fields,  where  still  doth  sway 
The  triple  tyrant ;  that  from  these  may  grow 
A  hundred-fold,  who,  having  learnt  thy  way, 
Early  may  fly  the  Babylonian  woe. 

The  excellence  of  this  sonnet  lies  in  something  else 
than  in  poetical  idea  or  in  grandeur  of  diction.  If 
Wordsworth's  definition  of  poetry  be  a  correct  one, 
this  sonnet  exactly  fulfils  its  requirements,  —  it  is  a 
'spontaneous  outburst  of  powerful  emotion.'  To  re- 
peat his  words  in  regard  to  the  Sonnet  in  general,  in 
writing  which  he  must  have  had  this  one  in  mind, 

In  ( Milton's)  hand 

The  thing  became  a  trumpet,  whence  he  blew 
Soul-animating  strains  —  alas,  too  few! 


68  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

Whether  the  sonorous  ring  of  its  verse  is  best  ex- 
pressed in  likening  it  to  the  trumpet  blast,  or  whether 
it  approach  not  nearer  to  the  grand  organ  roll,  whose 
music  is  heard,  sometimes  in  faint  undertone,  again 
in  overpowering  volume,  surging  through  the  mighty 
verse  of  Paradise  Lost,  —  of  this  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion, that  in  its  limited  compass  echo  '  the  solemn  and 
divine  harmonies  of  music.' 

The  sonnets  to  Cromwell,  Vane,  and  on  the  Massa- 
cre in  Piedmont  were  all  written  after  Milton's  blind- 
ness ;  that  on  his  Blindness  in  the  same  year  as  the 
last  of  these.  It  is  the  meditation  of  a  wise  man 
schooling  himself  to  adversity.  Not  a  note  of  repining 
in  the  presence  of  almost  overwhelming  misfortune  do 
we  hear,  such  as  the  moan  echoing  in  the  Agonistes, 


O  dark,  dark,  dark,  amid  the  blaze  of  noon, 
Irrevocably  dark,  total  Eclipse 
Without  all  hope  of  day  ! 


only  the  lament  here  of  a  strong  man  that  his  voice  of 
song  has  not  been  raised  in  the  service  of  God,  since 
as  Milton  believed  God  is  best  served  by  the  faithful 
exercise  of  those  talents  which  he  has  given,  to  one 
five,  to  another  two,  to  another  one  ;  to  every  man  ac- 
cording to  his  several  ability. 

When  I  consider  how  my  light  is  spent, 
Ere  half  my  days  in  this  dark  world  and  wide, 
And  that  one  talent  which  is  death  to  hide 
Lodged  with  me  useless,  though  my  soul  more  bent 
To  serve  therewith  my  Maker,  and  present 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  69 

My  true  account,  lest  He  returning  chide, — 
'  Doth  God  exact  day-labour,  light  denied  ? ' 
I  fondly  ask.     But  patience  to  prevent 
That  murmur,  soon  replies,  '  God  doth  not  need 
'  Either  man's  work  or  his  own  gifts.     Who  best 
'  Bear  his  mild  yoke,  they  serve  him  best.     His  state 
'  Is  kingly ;  thousands  at  his  bidding  speed, 
'  And  post  o'er  land  and  ocean  without  rest ; 
'  They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait.' 

All  of  Milton's  powers  were  unconsciously  gather- 
ing and  solidifying  and  ordering  themselves  for  the 
supreme  effort  of  Paradise  Lost. 

They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait, 

says  the  man  whose  'unpremeditated  verse,' — 

Unmeditated,  such  prompt  eloquence 

Flowed  from  (his)  lips,  in  Prose  or  Numerous  Verse, 

More  tuneable  than  needed  Lute  or  Harp 

To  add  more  sweetness. 

(P.  L.,V.  149-152.) 

whose  verse  in  two  or  three  years  was  to  take  the  form 
of  Paradise  Lost ;  whose  hand  was  to  strike  with  ease 
and  with  firmness  those  heroic  chords,  as  only  two,  or 
three,  or  four  men,  in  the  whole  history  of  the  world, 
before  his  time  and  since  have  struck,  in  sympathy  with 
which  every  man  that  reads,  feels  himself  dignified,  and 
ennobled,  and  taught  infinite  lessons  of  courage  and  of 
proud  humility. 

Similar  to  the  sonnet  which  we  have  been  consider- 


70  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

ing,  and  also  on  the  theme  of  his  blindness,  is  the 
second  of  those  addressed  to  Cyriac  Skinner,  who  was 
of  the  little  band  of  young  men  one  of  whom  daily 
read  and  walked  with  him. 

Cyriac,  this  three  years'  day  these  eyes,  though  clear, 

To  outward  view,  of  blemish  or  of  spot, 

Bereft  of  light,  their  seeing  have  forgot ; 

Nor  to  their  idle  orbs  doth  sight  appear 

Of  sun,  or  moon,  or  star,  throughout  the  year, 

Or  man,  or  woman. 

Like  enough  to  be  a  continuation  are  the  lines  of  the 
third  book  of  Paradise  Lost. 

Thus  with  the  year 
Seasons  return,  but  not  to  me  returns 
Day,  or  the  sweet  approach  of  Even  or  Morn, 
Or  sight  of  vernal  bloom  or  Summer's  Rose, 
Or  flocks,  or  herds,  or  human  face  divine. 


The  Sonnet  continues  Milton-like, — in  nothing  that 
he  wrote  do  we  see  the  fibre  of  his  character  more 
plainly  shown  than  here : 

Yet  I  argue  not 

Against  Heaven's  hand  or  will,  nor  bate  a  jot 
Of  heart  or  hope,  but  still  bear  up  and  steer 
Right  onward. 


The  Restoration  of  Charles  II.  to  the  English  throne 
was   to   take   place   in   less   than    five   years.      That 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  7! 

Restoration  was  to  Milton  the  shattering  of  his  dearest 
hopes.  The  work  for  which  in  his  youth  he  had  so 
carefully  trained  himself,  unperformed,  himself  in  hope- 
less blindness,  in  poverty,  in  disgrace,  and  in  old  age, 
his  second  wife  dead,  after  fifteen  months  of  happy 
married  life,  the  more  pleasing  in  contrast  with  his 
first  marriage,  and  obliged  to  hide,  such  a  life  might  to 
another  have  seemed  a  wretched  failure.  Yet  the  most 
sympathetic  admirer  of  Milton  and  the  most  unreserved 
Republican  may  be  pardoned  if  he  rejoice  in  the  ser- 
vice which  Charles  II.  unwittingly  rendered  to  the 
cause  of  civilization,  by  setting  free  the  man  John  Mil- 
ton from  unprofitable  tasks,  to  write  Paradise  Lost> 
even  although  the  causes  which  produced  that  libera- 
tion were  apparently  misfortunes  to  the  man,  and  post- 
poned for  a  while  Democracy  in  England. 

The  other  sonnet  addressed  to  Cyriac  Skinner  and 
the  one  to  Lawrence  we  could  ill  spare  in  any  treat- 
ment, however  special,  of  his  verse  written  during  this 
period,  which  should  present  us  with  a  well-rounded 
character,  or  give  us  a  correct  idea  of  the  man. 

The  touches  of  humour  in  Paradise  Lost  are  forbid- 
ding. More  than  once  do  the  austerities  of  the  He- 
brew Jehovah  yield  place  to  the  equally  repellant  and 
ungodlike  derision  of  a  Jove,  looking  at  man's  failure  to 
laugh  at  it — as  where  Raphael  in  the  Eighth  Book 
tells  Adam  that  man's  solution  of  the  celestial  motions 
will  excite  God's  mirth ;  or  where  in  the  last  book,  the 
confusion  of  tongues  provoked  God  to  merriment ;  or 
where  in  the  Fifth  Book  he  holds  in  contempt  the  re- 
volt of  Lucifer  and  the  Sons  of  Morn,  although  they 
were  his  created  Angels  and  a  third  part  of  the  hosts 


72  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

of  Heaven.  Only  severe  Puritanism  and  Calvinistic 
theology  could  so  harden  a  poet  as  to  make  him  imag- 
ine the  pleasure  of  the  Creator  contemplating  the  in- 
firmities of  his  creature. 

But  in  these  sonnets  which  we  now  approach,  we 
see  the  amiable  side  of  Milton,  as  nowhere  else  more 
fully. 

Lawrence,  of  virtuous  father  virtuous  son, 

Now  that  the  fields  are  dark,  and  ways  are  mire, 

Where  shall  we  sometimes  meet,  and  by  the  fire 

Help  waste  a  sullen  day,  what  may  be  won 

From  the  hard  season  gaining  ?     Time  will  run 

On  smoother,  till  Favonius  reinspire 

The  frozen  earth,  and  clothe  in  fresh  attire 

The  lily  and  the  rose  that  neither  sowed  nor  spun. 

What  neat  repast  shall  feast  us,  light  and  choice, 

Of  Attic  taste,  with  wine,  whence  we  may  rise 

To  hear  the  lute  well  touched,  or  artful  voice 

Warble  immortal  notes  and  Tuscan  air  ? 

He  who  of  these  delights  can  judge,  and  spare 

To  interpose  them  oft,  is  not  unwise. 

These  last  two  lines  contain  one  of  the  most  delight- 
ful ambiguities  to  be  found  in  literature ;  one  capable 
of  quite  opposite  meanings.  Milton  does  not  mean 
that  the  man  is  wise  who  will  spare  time  to  interpose 
these  good  things  frequently ;  what  he  wished  to  en- 
force was  a  sparing  indulgence  in  repasts  however 
1  neat '  with  wine  ;  as  for  the  beneficial  services  of  music, 
he  believed  in  them  without  reserve,  as  elevating,  and 
full  of  strength  and  repose.  Compare  the  ending  of 
this  sonnet,  as  presenting  a  moral  lesson  unexpectedly 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  73 

following  the  graceful  musings  of  the  poet,  with  that  of 
one  of  the  Italian  love  sonnets. 

Oh,  were  my  sluggish  heart  and  hard  bosom, 
As  good  a  soil  to  him  who  plants  from  Heaven. 

(IV.,  PATTISON'S  TRANSLATION.) 

In  a  similar  vein  to  this  and  equally  charming,  com- 
ing from  the  blind  scholar  and  poet  to  his  young  friend, 
is  the  first  of  the  two  to  Cyriac  Skinner. 

To-day  deep  thoughts  resolve  with  me  to  drench 
In  mirth  that,  after,  no  repenting  draws ; 
Let  Euclid  rest,  and  Archimedes  pause, 
And  what  the  Swede  intends,  and  what  the  French. 
To  measure  life  learn  thou  betimes,  and  know 
Towards  solid  good  what  leads  the  nearest  way ; 
For  other  things  mild  Heaven  a  time  ordains, 
And  disapproves  that  care,  though  wise  in  show, 
That  with  superfluous  burden  loads  the  day, 
And,  when  God  sends  a  cheerful  hour,  refrains. 

Thus  our  study  of  Milton's  sonnets  has  come  to  his 
last  one,  and  I  hope  the  time  so  spent  has  not  been 
tedious. 

Before  we  consider  his  last  touching  utterance  in  this 
form,  it  may  be  well  to  regard  for  a  moment  the  Son- 
nets as  a  whole,  and  see,  if  we  may,  wherein  it  has 
been  worth  our  while  to  study  them  for  an  hour. 

Milton's  Sonnets  reflect  the  period  of  his  life  in  which 
they  were  written.  They  are  the  simple,  forcible  utter- 
ance of  a  great  poet,  who  has  sacrificed  his  passion  for 
Poetry  to  a  stronger  passion  for  Duty.  The  Sonnets, 


74  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

in  many  ways,  show  the  limitations  of  the  poet's  life. 
They  are  not  written  in  an  imaginative  vein ;  while  he 
was  endowed  with  the  most  powerfully  organic  imagi- 
nation in  English  verse,  his  sonnets  are  of  Doric  sever- 
ity. It  is  remarkable  that  the  fault  of  ornateness, 
which  this  form  of  verse  had  derived  in  a  perfectly 
legitimate  manner  from  its  Italian  model,  but  which 
was  not  suited  to  the  genius  of  our  language,  should 
have  been  corrected  by  the  one  English  poet  with 
the  most  splendid  and  exuberant  imaginative  powers. 
His  is  the  credit  of  having  penetrated  to  the  life  and 
nature  of  the  Sonnet  and  recognized  its  exact  scope 
and  place  in  our  language.  For  twenty  years  he  chose 
no  other  form  for  expression  in  verse,  and  his  success 
was  such  in  this  as  to  warrant  Wordsworth's  praise,  in 
calling  them  '  soul  animating  strains.' 

It  would  not  be  surprising  if  poetical  work  whose 
merit  so  experienced  a  critic  as  Dr.  Johnson  failed  al- 
together to  detect,  and  which  others  since  have  pro- 
nounced not  very  remarkable,  should  fail  to  make  a 
telling  impression  on  cursory  acquaintance ;  but  when 
we  have  the  testimony  of  Wordsworth,  calling  them 
'  soul  animating  strains,'  k  behooves  us  before  hastily 
pronouncing  judgment  on  their  worth,  to  penetrate  to 
the  secret  of  their  power  if  we  are  able  to  do  so. 

It  is  well  known  that  the  same  powers  that  produced 
it,  are  required  to  form  a  judgment  of  any  artistic  crea- 
tion,—  the  same,  differing  only  in  degree,  —  the  closer 
the  approach  to  equal  powers,  the  keener  the  delight 
to  be  derived  in  appreciation. 

No  one  questions  the  force  and  truth  of  his  state- 
ment when  a  preacher  tells  us  that  only  those  whose 


MILTON'S  SONNETS.  75 

life  approaches  somewhat  in  spirituality  to  that  of 
Christ  can  realize  and  appreciate  the  sublimity  and 
divineness  of  his  character;  and  that  those  whose 
lives  most  nearly  approach  to  the  divine  perfection  of 
their  master,  following  his  bidding  to  be  perfect  even 
as  God  is  perfect,  will  most  fully  appreciate  the  unat- 
tainable perfection  of  their  exemplar. 

In  an  exactly  similar  manner,  to  compare  small 
things  with  great,  or  great  things  with  those  far 
greater,  only  those  whose  intellectual  powers  and 
cultivation  most  nearly  approach  those  of  the  poet 
can  adequately  judge  of  his  excellence. 

There  is  in  the  Sonnets  of  Milton  a  power  of  art 
displayed  which  it  took  the  kindred  art  of  Wordsworth 
fully  to  detect  and  appreciate.  '  My  admiration  of 
some  of  the  Sonnets  of  Milton  first  tempted  me  to 
write  in  that  form,'  he  tells  us.  (Advertisement  to  Col- 
lected Sonnets.)  '  In  the  cottage  of  Town-end,  one 
afternoon  in  1801,  my  sister  read  to  me  the  Sonnets  of 
Milton.  I  had  long  been  well  acquainted  with  them, 
but  I  was  particularly  struck  on  that  occasion  with  the 
dignified  simplicity  and  majestic  harmony  that  runs 
through  most  of  them  —  in  character  so  totally  dif- 
ferent from  the  Italian,  and  still  more  so  from  Shaks- 
pere's  fine  Sonnets.  I  took  fire,  if  I  may  be  allowed 
to  say  so,  and  produced  three  Sonnets  the  same  after- 
noon, the  first  I  ever  wrote,  except  an  irregular  one  at 
school.'  (Notes  by  the  author  to  the  complete  edition 
of  Wordsworth's  Poems.) 

Wordsworth's  Sonnets  were  written  by  a  poet  at  his 
leisure  and  carefully  protected  from  distraction. 

I  think  we  shall  find  the  key  to  the  working  out  and 


76  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

to  the  fertility  of  Wordsworth's  genius  in  one  of  his 
Sonnets  and  in  a  letter,  the  two  written  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  Century  apart; — the  letter  long  before 
success  crowned  him,  the  sonnet  after  the  vast  bulk  of 
his  poetry  on  which  his  fame  depends  was  written. 

Most  sweet  it  is  with  unuplifteo!  eyes 

To  pace  the  ground,  if  path  there  be  or  none, 

While  a  fair  region  round  the  traveller  lies 

Which  he  forbears  again  to  look  upon ; 

Pleased  rather  with  some  soft  ideal  scene, 

The  work  of  fancy,  or  some  happy  tone 

Of  meditation,  slipping  in  between 

The  beauty  coming  and  the  beauty  gone. 

If  Tlwught  and  Love  desert  us,  from  that  day 

Let  us  break  off  all  commerce  with  the  Muse. 

With  Thought  and  Love  companions  of  our  way, 

Whate'er  the  senses  take  or  may  refuse, 

The  mind's  internal  heaven  shall  shed  her  dews 

Of  inspiration  in  the  humblest  lay. 

(Composed  in  1833.) 


Wordsworth  had  meditated  of  the  deepest  issues  of 
life,  and  had  thrown  his  whole  soul  into  what  he  had 
said.  People  would  not,  at  first,  accept  such  senti- 
ment, their  interests  being  engrossed  in  the  struggle 
for  preferment,  and  in  all  sorts  of  ambitions : 

Getting  and  spending,  we  lay  waste  our  powers. 

What  have  the  things  which  I  have  written,  he  writes 
his  correspondent,  '  to  do  ( to  say  it  all  at  once )  with  a 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  77 

life  without  love?  In  such  a  life  there  can  be  no 
thought;  for  we  have  no  thought  (save  thoughts  of 
pain),  but  as  far  as  we  have  love  and  admiration.' 
(Letter  to  Lady  Beaumont,  1807.) 

In  Love  and  Thought  was  his  life  rounded ;  one  was 
possible  to  him  only  as  the  other  was  lavished  upon 
him,  and  those  who  are  familiar  with  his  life  know  that 
he  was  surrounded,  during  the  twenty  years  of  his 
inspired  poetic  utterance,  with  all  the  care  which  the 
affection  of  two  most  remarkably  bright  and  devoted 
women,  his  wife  and  his  sister,  could  suggest.  Forced 
to  live  with  rigid  economy,  yet  with  everything  done 
for  him  that  love  could  prompt,  removed  from  the  dis- 
tractions of  society  and  the  world,  nourishing  a  life  of 
sedate  reflection  and  meditative  calm  and  continence, 
it  is  no  wonder  that  his  mind  attained  that  healthful- 
ness,  whose  product  is  the  splendid  sanity  of  his  verse, 
the  joy  and  refreshment  and  health  of  which  could 
make  conquest  even  of  the  scientifically  derived  dis- 
satisfaction and  overwhelming  sense  of  futility  and 
dejection  which  beset  John  Stuart  Mill  at  one  time, 
as  he  tells  us  in  his  Autobiography,  and  which  much 
oftener  prevails  in  the  moods  of  less  elaborately  and 
mechanically  sustained  faculties. 

Solitude  and  fostering  care  were  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  the  performance  of  what  he  did;  —  Milton 
produced  the  work  that  we  are  considering  amid  the 
bustle  and  distractions  of  public  office,  and  occupied 
with  fighting  the  wordy  battles  of  his  party.  It  is  no 
wonder  that  such  work  partakes  of  limitations,  yet 
1  Milton's  (Sonnets)  stand  supreme  in  stateliness,  (as) 
Wordsworth's  in  depth  and  delicacy,'  says  Francis  Tur- 


78  MILTON'S  SONNETS. 

ner  Palgrave,  now  professor  of  poetry  at  Oxford,  and  a 
critic  whose  opinion  is  of  the  very  highest  value.  What 
qualities  unite  in  them  to  produce  their  stateliness  ? 

We  should  deceive  ourselves  if  we  selected  the  Son- 
nets as  part  of  Milton's  most  imaginative  poetry,  as  of 
the  same  order  of  poetry  as  Lycidas,  the  Penseroso,  or 
Paradise  Lost;  these  would  approach,  or  fulfil,  the 
function  of  Poetry  as  Wordsworth  has  defined  it,  as 
being  the  end  toward  which  he  himself  aspired  as  a 
poet ;  '  To  console  the  afflicted ;  to  add  sunshine  to 
daylight  by  making  the  happy  happier;  to  teach  the 
young  and  the  gracious  of  every  age  to  see,  to  think, 
and  to  feel.'  (Letter  to  Lady  Beaumont.) 

It  is  not  for  clairvoyant  sight,  a  strength  of  vision 
that  penetrates  to  the  inmost  life  of  things,  and  which 
we  find  in  Wordsworth,  that  these  sonnets  are  remark- 
able ;  nor  does  their  value  consist  in  profound  thought. 
They  are  not  to  be  compared  with  Shakspere's  in  this 
regard,  which  are  packed  full  of  meaning,  a  more 
recondite  significance  often  underlying  that  of  the  sur- 
face. The  best  of  these  sonnets  reveal  strength  of 
feeling;  therein  lies  their  charm,  and  in  the  simplicity 
of  the  means  with  which  Milton  has  produced  in  us  the 
emotions  which  had  possession  of  his  own  breast. 

This  strength  of  feeling  is  something  differing  from 
what  is  best  described  as  poetic  sensibility,  which 
Shelley  and  Keats  had  in  abundance,  and  which 
Wordsworth  had,  combined  with  strength  of  char- 
acter, and  an  intense  desire  to  elevate  the  feelings 
and  thoughts  and  ideals  of  mankind.  The 

Still,  sad  music  of  humanity 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  79 

was  an  undertone  that  with  him  even  poetic  ecstasy 
never  forgot. 

By  '  poetic  sensibility  '  I  mean  a  delicate  and  devel- 
oped power  of  detecting  beautiful  surroundings,  which 
less  refined  perceptions  would  overlook,  combined  with 
a  power  of  transmuting  and  sublimating  through  the 
magic  of  Fancy  and  Imagination,  these  simple  impres- 
sions of  beauty  in  the  midst  of  which  we  live  into 


Somethmg  aew  and  strange, 

in  short,  into  poetry. 

There  is  little  of  this  play  and  playfulness  of  Fancy 
in  the  Sonnets;  that  is  found  in  L  Allegro  and  in 
//  Penseroso,  —  and  something  higher  than  Fancy,  sub- 
lime Imagination,  lifts  us  into  an  unreal  and  purifying 
atmosphere  when  we  read  Paradise  Lost,  or  Regained, 
or  the  Agonistes. 

I  think  that  in  many  moods  of  the  mind,  particularly 
in  dejection  or  disappointment,  Wordsworth  will  recall 
one  to  a  feeling  of 

Joy  in  widest  commonalty  spread, 

as  no  other  poet  can  ;  Milton's  function  is  not  that. 
Paradise  Lost,  or  the  Agonistes,  or  Lycidas,  or  the 
Avenge,  O  Lord!  should  be  read  at  the  height  of  one's 
faculties  ;  in  one's  strength  their  strength  should  be 
tested. 

When  Milton  wrote  the  sonnet  in  memory  of  his 
dearly  beloved  wife,  who  was  but  lately  dead,  we  know 
from  his  nephew's  narrative  that  he  was  at  work  upon 


80  MILTON'S    SONNETS. 

Paradise  Lost ;  living  that  intense,  inner,  ideal  life,  in 
the  presence  of  Archangels  and  Seraphim,  surrounded 
by  the  realities  and  splendours  of  Heaven,  or  walking 
in  Paradise  with  our  first  parents,  feeling  with  them  as 
none  ever  felt  more  vividly  the  favour  of  God  and  the 
majesty  of  innocence, — man's  happiest  life,  '  simplicity 
and  spotless  innocence': 

Mine  eyes  he  closed,  but  open  left  the  cell 
Of  Fancy  my  internal  sight. 

(P.  L.,  VIII.,  460-1.) 

To  this  '  internal  sight '  his  wife  appeared  in  vision  : 

Methought  I  saw  my  late  espoused  saint 
Brought  to  me,  like  Alcestis,  from  the  grave. 

Her  face  he  had  never  seen,  and  even  here  that  privi- 
lege was  denied  him  ;  she  came 

Vested  all  in  white,  pure  as  her  mind. 

Her  face  was  veiled  ;  yet  to  my  fancied  sight 

Love,  sweetness,  goodness,  in  her  person  shined 

So  clear,  as  in  no  face  with  more  delight. 

But  O,  as  to  embrace  me  she  inclined 

I  waked,  she  fled,  and  day  brought  back  my  night. 

All  must  feel  the  pathos  of  the  closing  verse. 

I  beg  for  indulgence  in  quoting  the  two  best-known 
lines  in  Paradise  Lost ;  but  I  wish  to  call  attention  to 
the  simple  dignity  of  the  lines  of  the  sonnet,  which 
form  the  ending  of  his  utterance  of  this  period,  in  com- 


MILTON'S   SONNETS.  8 1 

parison  with  the  simplicity  and  force  which  character- 
ize the  ending  of  that  poem,  of  the  Paradise  Regained, 
and  of  the  Agonistes. 

You  remember  that  Michael  was  sent  to  lead  from 
Paradise  our  first  parents — 

They  hand  in  hand  with  wandering  steps  and  slow, 
Through  Eden  took  their  solitary  way. 

In  the  Paradise  Regained,  after  the  angelic  escort 
had  borne  Christ  in  safety  from  the  topmost  pinnacle 
of  the  temple,  and  ministered  to  his  refreshment  with 
celestial  food, 

He  unobserved 
Home  to  his  Mother's  house  private  returned. 

And  in  the  Agonistes,  the  closing  verses  form  a  su- 
premely fitting  ending  for  his  last  expression  in  verse. 

His  servants  he     *     *     * 

With  peace  and  consolation  hath  dismist, 

And  calm  of  mind,  all  passion  spent. 


In  like  manner  the  Sonnets  which  are  the  brief  rec- 
ord of  Milton's  poetical  life  for  twenty  years,  have 
their  impressive  close.  The  realities  of  worldly  happi- 
ness for  him  were  at  an  end.  Monarchy  restored  ; 
puritanism  defeated;  himself  wandering  in  the  dark 
mazes  of  blindness ;  his  wife  who  had  brought  him  con- 
solation and  joy,  dead ;  well  might  he  say, 
6 


82  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

Though  fall'n  on  evil  days, 
On  evil  days  though  fall'n,  and  evil  tongues; 
In  darkness  and  with  dangers  compassed  round, 
And  solitude. 

(P.  L.,  VII.,  25-28.) 

Nor  am  I  in  the  list  of  them  that  hope ; 
Hopeless  are  all  my  evils.' 

(Sam.  Agon.,  648-9. ) 

The  life  in  vision  .alone^  now  was  a  reality.  To  him, 
made  fit  by  suffering,  by  striving,  and  by  the  Grace  of 
God,  was  granted  to  see  the  Glories  of  Heaven,  and  to 
taste  of  its  beatitudes.  In  a  dream  the  compassionate 
tenderness  of  God  had  vouchsafed  for  a  moment  again 
the  presence  of  his  wife,  but  we  hear  his  moan  of  resig- 
nation : 

I  waked, — she  fled,  and  day  brought  back  my  night. 


jo 


82  MILTON'S   SONNETS. 

Though  fall'n  on  evil  days, 
On  evil  days  though  fall'n,  and  evil  tongues; 
In  darkness  and  with  dangers  compassed  round, 
And  solitude. 

(P.  L.,  VII.,  25-28.) 

Nor  am  I  in  the  list  of  them  that  hope ; 
Hopeless  are  all  my  evils.' 

(Sam.  Agon.,  648-9. ) 


ERRATA. 

Page  42,  8th  line  from  the  bottom,  'as  a  value* 
should  read  '  as  of  value.' 

Page  68,  line  17,  'irrevocably'  should  read  'irrecov- 
erably.' 

Page  79,  line  9,  '  new'  should  read  'rich.' 

Page  82,  line  9,  strike  out  the  comma  after  'alone,' 
and  insert  a  comma  after  '  vision  ' ;  so  that  the  passage 
shall  read,  '  The  life  in  vision,  alone  now  was  a  reality.' 


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